"Very interesting reasoning, Mr. Detective."
Old Gary had to admire Joe Boutrang's subtle observation skills.
"Thank you for the compliment. Since your captain is not here, I am almost certain that he has been killed."
Joe Butran said seriously to old Gary.
"Impossible. Our captain is a retired fighter. It's no problem for him to beat three people alone."
Old Gary shook his head and said.
"Your hot water supply is heated in a steam room at the bottom of the cabin from a tank on deck?"
asked Joe Butran.
"That's right."
"I want to see your hull structure diagram."
“That stuff is only in the captain’s room, we don’t have it in our collection here.
If there are illustrations of beautiful women, I can find a few for you."
Old Gary said with a shrug.
"Then please lead the way. I want to go to the captain's room."
Jobtran stood up and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was twelve fifty-five.
Joe Butran took out his pocket watch again and looked at the time. The time was correct.
Old Gary staggered along the way, and Sif walked beside Job Tran and asked softly,
"How do you know the security captain was killed?"
"Simple reasoning. It's almost one o'clock now, and the security captain hasn't returned to the security room yet. According to his confession, there was a gap of nearly three hours.
Three hours is enough time for a killer to disguise the scene and get away."
Jobtran answered.
"But isn't it said that the security captain is a good fighter?"
Sif asked confusedly.
"There are many ways to kill a person, not necessarily through combat."
"So are we going to the captain's room to look for the structural diagram now?"
"Yes and no, you will know in a moment."
Then the three of them came outside the captain's room without saying a word.
Jobtron raised his hand to stop old Gary from opening the door.
"What's wrong?"
Gary Sr. asked.
"Shut up, I need a quiet environment."
Joe Butran said with a frown.
"There seemed to be traces of wiping on the door frame."
Jobtran squatted down, took a look at the ground, and touched the floor with his fingers.
He put his finger to his nose and smelled it.
"The obvious smell of disinfectant."
Then Jobtran opened the door of the captain's room.
The dim starlight and moonlight shone in through the large floor-to-ceiling windows. It seemed that an oil lamp was not needed to see the layout of the captain's room.
The storm was still outside the window, and the howling of the wind sounded like an evil monster roaring softly.
The raindrops hit the window glass with a crackling sound, filling the captain's room with a depressing atmosphere.
The space in the captain's room is much larger than other rooms and is divided into two areas.
The captain's room is located in the bow cabin of the roller sailboat. One of the rooms is a working area, which is filled with instruments with various indicator dials and a long table, which is obviously used to place nautical charts.
A fixed compass was installed in the middle of the long table, which was used to determine the direction; and on the long table was a long and thin pencil case, which must have been used for daily measurement.
There is a cylinder under the long table, which contains some rolled-up drawings, probably the ship structure drawings.
On the wall of the work area is a colorful world map with the voyage route marked with pins.
There were a total of thirty-three pins on the world map, but they were of different colors, which made Jobtran feel a little strange.
"Sif, can you help me see if there are any thumbtacks on the table?"
Jobtran asked Sif while looking at the routes marked on the world map.
Sif walked to the long table, opened her pencil case and answered,
"There are quite a few, dozens of them in all colors."
Jobtran frowned and felt that the thumbtack on the waterway might symbolize something else.
"Hey! Old drunkard, come and take a look."
Joe Butran said to old Gary who was sitting idle.
"I'm not Old Drunkard, I'm Old Gary!"
Old Gary complained.
"Okay, old drunkard, where are we on this route?"
Jobtrand asked jokingly.
"Damn it, if you didn't have something on me, I swear I would beat you, a detective in a bathrobe, to death with a broom.
The Cyclops is a wooden clipper ship designed to reach a speed of 18 knots by using both wind and steam power, but the wind direction is wrong today, so most of the time it has to rely on steam power, so I estimate that the speed is only about 10 knots. ”①
Old Gary spread his hands and said.
“We set sail at 12:10, so we have been sailing for about thirteen hours now.
Calculated at a speed of ten knots, that would be one hundred and eighty-five kilometers.
The total distance is 4,352 kilometers, so we should be halfway between the second and third markers.”
Jobtran quickly calculated the total voyage distance and came up with the above result.
"So what?"
Old Gary asked in confusion.
“Our starting point, Cuxhaven, was marked with a blue pin, but the second pin after it was red.
Adding the murder I suspected, don’t you think this roadmap is a blatant murder notice? "
Joe Butran said slowly.
"Old Gary doesn't quite understand what you mean. Do you think that a killer sneaked into the most difficult place to sneak into on this ship, this damn captain's room, and then made a murder announcement without being discovered?"
Gary Sr. asked.
"What makes you think the captain's cabin is the hardest place to break into
It was not locked and not guarded, and one could sneak in during the day simply by changing into a sailor suit.
Am I wrong in what I said
Jobtran asked rhetorically.
"Eh? That's not right. The captain's cabin should be locked at night."
Old Gary slapped his head and said.
Jobtran glanced at Sif, who seemed to be in deep thought, with a half-smile.
"Tell me, what are you thinking about?"
"So you mean the captain might not be in the cabin?"
Sif asked.
"According to normal logic, Sif, your guess is likely correct.
Generally speaking, the key to the captain's cabin should be kept by the captain and the first mate, am I right, old drunkard? "
Joe Butran looked at Old Gary and asked.
"That's right, none of us lower-level employees have the key to the captain's cabin."
Old Gary answered honestly.
"That's right, so why is this door unlocked today?"
Jobtron guided Sif and Old Gary's logic and carried out reasoning.
"Maybe the captain just forgot? On a stormy night, it's normal for him to have a few drinks and forget about it."
Gary Sr. replied.
"Perhaps this is normal for you, but for someone who can be a captain, he would never make such a low-level mistake."
Jo Butron teased.
Old Gary's face turned red with anger. Seeing this, Sif smiled and asked Job Tran,
"Mr. Joe Boutrang, are you saying that the captain or the first mate was one of the reasons for the disappearance of the security captain?"
"Jumping to conclusions so quickly is a habit a detective shouldn't have. It will cause your logical divergence to become narrow."
Jobtran shook his head and walked towards the captain's room with its door open.
Looking from outside the door, the captain's room was dark and no sound could be heard from inside.
The open door seemed like a doorman standing in front of it, inviting guests to come in.
"I need your matches."
Joe Butran stood in front of the door and said to old Gary.
Old Gary handed over the whole box of matches distressedly.
"Use it sparingly. It's not easy to find this thing on the ship."
"Then I would like to thank you for your generous gift on behalf of the captain and your security captain."
Without turning his head, Jobtran lit a match and walked carefully into the captain's living room.
The small match was not enough to illuminate the entire room, but it was enough for Jobtran to find the kerosene lamp by the door.
After lighting the kerosene lamp with a match, the light of the kerosene lamp barely illuminated most of the room.
Everyone saw a horrifying scene: the captain was naked and hanged on his own beam.
Old Gary's eyes widened, and he fell backwards, sitting on the ground, muttering to himself,
"Oh my god, is the curse of the Cyclops coming?"
Sif was supported by Jobtran who was prepared for the situation, so she didn't fall like old Gary.
"Oh my god, has the captain been cursed by the mermaid???"
Old Gary couldn't believe what he saw and attributed the tragedy to superstitious legend.
The captain's body in front of him exuded a strange and ominous aura. On his head, he wore a crown made of seaweed that was obtained from nowhere, and on his back, a spiral mark was carved with a sharp weapon like a knife.
The captain's posture looked very strange, as if he was kneeling in front of the bed and worshiping the portrait hanging on the wall.
The wound on the captain's back had stopped bleeding, and blood had fallen onto his bed sheets, forming tiny spots of blood.
Jobtran placed Sif on the long table outside the door and said to the two of them,
"If you find this scene unacceptable, I suggest you don't come in."
Sif shook her head and bit her lip hard. The blood and the instant pain helped her recover from the shock.
"I can."
Seeing this, Old Gary whispered to himself,
"Old Gary, you're not afraid. You can't lose to this little chick."
Then he got up from the ground and patted his butt.
"Come on, great detective, show us your skills and recreate the scene."
Old Gary said.
"on site?"
Joe Butran raised his eyebrows and asked,
“This is not a crime scene.
Sif, do you see what's on the ground? What's on the ground?"
"The ground is very clean, there is nothing on it."
Sif replied suspiciously.
"So this is not a crime scene."
Jobtran answered.
"Bullshit, didn't the captain commit suicide by hanging?"
Gary Sr. questioned.
"Hanging is just an illusion. Who can carve such a mark on his back before hanging himself?"
Jobtran asked rhetorically.
Old Gary was speechless for a moment. He understood the meaning of Jobtran's words, but in order to save face, he asked back,
"Then how do you explain the presence of the captain's body here?"
Joe Butran did not answer old Gary's question immediately. Instead, he walked behind the corpse and took a look at the painting on the wall.
"Sif, could you please bring the kerosene lamp closer to the painting?"
asked Joe Butran.
"Of course."
Sif took the oil lamp from Jobtran and held it close to the oil painting hanging on the wall.
Under the light, Jobtran finally saw the contents of the painting clearly.
The rough brushwork looks like a child's random scribbles;
It's a simple mix of colors, blue, green, black and white. If it weren't for the kerosene lamp being close by, it would be impossible to make out what's on the painting.
It was a dead silent mountain range, a pure black mountain range. There was snow and wind all around the mountain range, and in the center of the mountain range, a huge city could be vaguely seen.
The mountains in the painting seem to have an evil charm. If you are a paleontologist or ancient architect, you will feel a strong desire to find it from this painting.
"It seems that what the captain was kneeling on was not the painting itself, but the mountains in it."
Joe Butran thought so.
"Is this an anti-Jidu ritual?"
Sif asked.
"No, it's not that simple."
Jobtran said earnestly.
The mountains in the painting look very old, older than any human civilization, as if they had existed billions of years ago.
Jobtran had some vague guesses, but the truth about the existence of this mountain range that was like a haze covering the earth might only be revealed after he saw the Book of the Dead.
There was clearly one more mystery that needed to be solved, and until the disappearance of the security captain and the death of the captain were solved, the matter of the mountains had to be put on hold.
"Old Gary, get the first mate."
Joe Butran looked at the painting and said to old Gary without turning his head.
"Ha, you finally said my name."
Old Gary seemed somewhat happy about this, and went off alone to look for the first mate.
"That's enough, Sif."
Jobtran took the kerosene lamp from Sif and began to look around the living room.
"It seems that our captain is a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder and mysophobia."
Joe Butran said softly.
He stretched out his finger and touched the small wooden cabinet beside the bed. The cabinet was spotless. He reached out and pulled out the drawer. The clothes inside were neatly folded, but there seemed to be an indentation under the wooden board of one of the drawers.
Jobtran brought the kerosene lamp closer, looked at the overall outline of the indentation, and concluded that it was a flintlock pistol.
But at this time, the captain's hidden pistol was not found in the room, so where was this pistol
As he thought, Jobtran observed any details he might have missed.
Finally, he discovered that the captain had a black tattoo on the sole of his foot that was identical to the mark on his back.
"Is this a coincidence?"