Mermaid Reef

Linde Brandon's eyes were red, and he lost a lot of weight.

Despite being shaved and groomed, he looked tired and worn down.

He poked the pipes twice with his pipe cleaner, and dropped them on the ground in a fit of irritation.

None of Linde's servants dared to pick it up.

Many things have happened these days, even the servants of the Brandon family have faintly sensed that the wind outside is not right.

Scotland Yard Police conducted a massive raid around the docks, and Brandon Lines did not escape, and several warehouses were inspected.This was impossible before, and a person of considerable status like Linde Brandon could solve these troubles with face and money.

The Scotland Yard police officers have always been scorned by newspaper critics as lackeys of the nobles. Now the dogs do not recognize the Brandon family and start to bite. This is a very bad signal.

After the news came out, many cooperative firms changed their attitudes.

Although the Brandon family still has land and traditional industries, shipping is the foundation of their fortune. If they lose their voice in this industry, they will soon be torn apart and swallowed up by other shipping companies with backgrounds.

Linde was furious.

At first he couldn't figure it out, it was just a valet who died in a tavern, why would the Scotland Yard police bite him?

Even if Linde later heard that the docksiders who went to hunt down the poor detectives were also dead, he didn't take it to heart. He knew very well that Scotland Yard, a "dangerous element" like this, would like to die, let alone After investigating the cause of death, the case was closed by casually registering as a rogue, causing trouble, and gang fights.

According to Linde's plan, when the Scotland Yard police came to ask about the death of the fired valet, he would deny it and put pressure on the police to hunt down the detective who appeared in the pub at the scene of the crime and bought the valet with money. .

The detective was a suspicious figure in Scotland Yard's records because he had been using a pseudonym and no one knew his true origins.

It was a smooth plan, but there was an accident.

—Scotland Yard paid no attention to John Doe, a poor detective, and they rushed straight to the docks, as if they were going to take a bite out of the Brandon family.

Linde didn't know the reason until he spent a sum of money.

The thing turned out to be that the judge's nephew died in the women's branch. Lin De had vaguely heard about it, and it was a very shameful death. This is a very troublesome case, but the murderer must be found.I don't know what's going on, but I checked and found that it was the daughter of a smuggler on the pier. It is said that the group of villains rushed into the women's branch to rescue the murderer and washed the house with blood.

The judge was furious. If the murderer is not found, the whole of Scotland Yard will not be able to spend this Christmas peacefully.

At this critical moment, there was another case in which the wood warehouseman on the dock killed someone in a tavern and fought in an alley.

It's like throwing a bucket of oil on the fire.

I heard that Congress is preparing to draft a proposal to completely "clean up" the docks!

Such was the fate of the Brandon Shipping Company.

The gray power in Linde's hands has also shrunk sharply. He was also targeted by the customs, and a batch of absinthe transported through the French smuggling route was confiscated in the warehouse.

In addition to huge fines, he was also involved in a lawsuit. In just a few days, Linde's eyes were bloodshot.

His dreams also became chaotic.

The narrow attic became a huge, dark, deep cavern, and the child's limbs became elongated and eerie, like a humanoid spider with blue eyes.

Linde ran desperately in the dream, but he couldn't get out of the attic. The stairs under his feet were endless. Every time he would stumble and fall down the stairs, and then wake up from the nightmare.

No matter when Linde fell asleep, he would wake up three hours later.

This is also the result of the tranquilizers he took.

It stands to reason that powerful sleeping pills can make people sleepless all night until they are awakened by servants at dawn.

But I don't know why it didn't work in Linde's place. He has changed two kinds of drugs, and the nightmare symptoms not only did not alleviate, but also worsened.

Linde began to hallucinate.

The kid was talking, asking who he was and why he was at Brandon's.

Accompanied by auditory hallucinations, there was also a headache, and Linde became even more irritable.

The doctor advised him to use morphine. Linde had done this business on the smuggling route. Of course, he knew the harm of this thing. Although many doctors regarded it as a good medicine, morphine is still good for pain relief or tranquilizer occasionally. Will be like the officers who come back from the field, like a madman.

The hanging curtain outside the box was not drawn up, Linde didn't really come to listen to the opera, he just used the theater as a place to meet some people who were inconvenient for him to meet.

This is a common phenomenon in European high society, including bribery, secret lovers...

After the first act of the opera, Linde immediately signaled his secretary to bring a brown and black document bag. He was going to visit the justice.

The meeting didn't go well.

The judge looked contemptuous, and a certain marquis who was the introducer was also a little tired of the Brandon family.

The inheritance lawsuit lasted for two years, mainly because Linde was willing to spend money, and the money came from the Brandon Shipping Company. If he couldn't handle the trouble this time, the money bag would become a broken bag, with no value to be extracted.

Linde held back his anger and left the box.

After walking a few steps, his head suddenly hurt so badly that he could only support the wall.

Linde's headache didn't get better until he was helped by the secretary out of the corridor of the first-class box.

"go back."

Linde said with a sullen face.

He had to prepare for the worst, such as considering selling the property and leaving the UK.

The secretary's face was also very ugly. He realized that he was about to lose his job. Just as he was thinking about the future, his eyes suddenly went dark, and he bumped into Linde's shoulder.

The secretary raised his head wonderingly, and found that his master was trembling all over, staring at the first-class box in the distance with a horrible and distorted expression.

"Bo, Mr. Brandon?" The secretary was taken aback. He thought that Linde wanted to take the risk and take revenge on the justice.

"Did you see the person in that box?"

Linde picked up the secretary's collar with one hand and asked in a hissed voice.

"what?"

The secretary looked at Linde's red eyes and was frightened.

"Duke Charlie's box." Linde stared at that direction, the person with a pair of light blue eyes.

The secretary said with difficulty: "There is no one there!"

"The curtain is drawn!" Linde growled, his expression seemed to be cannibalistic, "Look carefully!"

"Uh, it was indeed opened, which is very strange. But... it may also be that the cleaning staff of the theater forgot to tidy up." The secretary didn't notice the dark box at all. Even if he looked carefully, he didn't find Lin De said the figure.

"...Black hair, he's looking this way. Damn, he's staring at me." Linde kept muttering.

The secretary was full of fear, and he confirmed that Linde was really crazy: "Sir, the stairs here are half the width of the hall from the box, and you don't have a telescope in your hand, how can you see...the people in the box over there?"

Linde froze suddenly.

He turned his head again in a posture of breaking his neck, staring straight at the dark opera house.

This open and tall space with no visible ceiling suddenly overlapped with the dream.

The slender and twisted monster crawled slowly, stared at him faintly, and stretched out its ferocious claws to grab him...

Linde retreated instinctively, he wanted to run away.

"Snapped!"

He fell down the stairs.

***

Jensen continued to watch the chaos over there. Secretary Linde seemed to have called the people in the theater to help, and they carried the unconscious and injured Linde out.

This bit of confusion doesn't interrupt the show, and few in the audience actually notice what happened to the stairs over there.

Tonight's play is The Marriage of Figaro, and the soprano is Miss Vanessa, the most famous actress in London.

"...How does her voice sound?" Jason asked Gemil who was sitting next to him.

"Among humans, pretty good."

Gemil is obviously an ancient god who cares about sound very much. He has "collected" many sounds, but most of them are the painful wails and screams of humans and marine mammals, and there are very few high-pitched voices as emotional as opera actresses. See you.

"You like high notes?"

"A sound that humans cannot make."

So Gemil prefers cetaceans to humans.

"This human house is very interesting."

Gemil observed the structure of the opera house, and he was keenly aware that the sound was amplified, and the sound waves evenly echoed throughout the hall.

A long time ago, Gemil found a sea rock cave with a similar structure near the Aegean Sea in Greece, and he lived there with great love for hundreds of years, and then there was a terrifying legend of the Mermaid Reef in the Aegean Sea.

If a sailor hears the mermaid's melodious song, he can't help but drive his ship into a reef bathed in silver moonlight.

There are sunken ships and dead bodies floating near the reef.

Contrary to the legend, the mermaid is not hunting, but singing at home.

Unexpectedly, the structure of Haiyan Cave is so excellent that the singing is transmitted too far.

"Restrain your appreciation, the power will create a 'connection', and that Miss Vanessa will see us." Jason reminded.

Gemil looked at the soprano and found that the willpower of the other party was only half of that of the detective.

Forget it.

The sight of the two evil gods might throw her into confusion, and the opera wasn't over yet.

Every audience who listens carefully to the opera hopes that the performance will end smoothly--Cthulhu who didn't buy tickets is no exception.

"By the way, what is this opera about?" Gemil opened the red silk cover sheet provided by the theater and read the introduction of the plot.

"The Marriage of Figaro", the wedding should be the perfect stage of human love!

"This is Italian."

Jason admitted without hesitation that he didn't understand either.

But he guessed that the Sea God would like this, and he was right.

The mermaid incarnation has a wide vocal range.

"Dong dong."

The box door was knocked lightly.

Jason knew who it was without looking back.

The door lock opened quietly without anyone touching it.

When John pushed the door again, he almost lost his footing and fell straight in.

"Mr. Johnson, the entrustment you entrusted to me has made significant progress." John took out his notebook and said quickly, "I found a piece of very favorable evidence in the case report 20 years ago, about Linde. Brandon is suspected of murdering his brother's evidence. I also contacted the young lady who married Brandon's family through the old servant. She has been suspicious of her brother's death for so many years. I have already told her the clues of the evidence through an anonymous letter. .The problem now is that Lynd Brandon is in trouble with his business and he is likely to flee the UK... We need to stop him before he goes to court."

"He broke his head and a broken leg and is on his way to the hospital."

Jason pointed to the stairs in the distance, and said calmly, "I watched him fall just now."

John: "..."

You guys are really in love and scary.

--------------------

The author has something to say:

John: The evil gods are masters of time management, right?