Mystery: The Returner of the Stars

Chapter 26 Strange Bell Sound, Different Script
How about setting a fire, attracting everyone's attention, and sneaking out of the workhouse?

Or hide behind the door, wait for the guard to come to check, knock him out, and then take the key to open the door and slip away?
Or find a place to hide, so that the people in the workhouse can't find it, and then wait until there is no one, and then find a chance to leave?

These were the suggestions of Lecturer Furren, who obviously read detective adventure novels a lot.

Professor Wayne made no suggestion, but left Hastur to worry about the problem alone.

He believed that since Hastur made a suggestion, there must be a solution.

"If only there were cosmetics and wigs here, and a set of women's dresses."

Lecturer Furren thought of a very feasible method, but the conditions here are obviously not feasible.

"Actually, it's not difficult to sneak away." Hastur quickly shut down Lecturer Furren's big brain hole.

He can't wear women's clothes!
"Do you have any good ideas?" Lecturer Furren looked at Hastur with a happy face.

"I don't necessarily have to leave the workhouse in the middle of the night. Tomorrow, when I go out during the day, I can slip away at random. It will depend on you and Professor Wayne."

"That's right! You don't have to slip away tonight! Why didn't I think of it!" Lecturer Furren looked annoyed.

"..."

Hastur did not discuss this topic with Lecturer Furren, but discussed tomorrow's matters with Professor Wayne.

Jingle Bell!
Jingle Bell!
Jingle Bell!
Just as the three of them were discussing what might happen tomorrow, three crisp bells sounded outside the house.

They had also heard this voice at lunchtime, when the administrator of the workhouse took out a string of bells and rang them a few times, and at the same time announced the eating rules during the meal.

The sound of the bell came quickly and dissipated quickly. There were only three rings, and the outside fell into silence again.

Inside the room, the three people looked at each other with astonished expressions.

How can there be bells ringing in the middle of the night?
Inexplicably feel a little weird!
"Could it be some child who couldn't sleep at night and deliberately made such a prank?"

"Perhaps the bell was some kind of signal that they planned their actions by the bell?"

"Maybe we heard it wrong. This is the sound of the wind blowing through the bell hanging outside the door?"

Lecturer Furren gave his guess.

Professor Wayne didn't speak. He got up and came to the door, listened for a while, and walked back and forth a few steps.

Finally said: "Let's go out and have a look, maybe we can get some unexpected gains."

Hasta firmly opposed Professor Wayne's proposal.

That burst of bells just now was definitely not simple!
It is very likely that Extraordinary elements are involved!
This is an inexplicable early warning from his heart, and in this case, he absolutely trusts his intuition.

"Go out and take a look, shouldn't it matter?" Lecturer Furren was also moved. After all, judging from the loudness of the sound, the sound of the bell was still some distance away.

"Well, it's just a matter of time to go back to the room to rest." Professor Wayne also agreed with this suggestion.

"Wait a minute."

Hastur stopped them and said solemnly: "I don't think things are that simple, so don't take too many risks."

Lecturer Flon said with a smile: "It's okay, let's take a look from a distance."

"Emperor Russell once had a famous saying: 'Curiosity killed the cat.' This means that being too curious about things can easily put oneself in a dangerous situation."

Hastur moved out the signboard of Emperor Roselle, hoping to dispel their adventurous thoughts.

"It's a very philosophical sentence, as expected of Emperor Roselle."

Lecturer Furren agreed with this sentence, and at the same time smiled and assured Hastur that he would never run out to take risks in the middle of the night.

Having said that, Hastur has no reason to stop them, and his bed really can't sleep three people.

When the door opened, Hastur poked his head out and looked around for a while to confirm that no patrolling guards passed by before calling Professor Wayne and Lecturer Furren out.

Then they watched the two of them leave with the kerosene lamps in hand. They did not do anything unnecessary. They just looked at the source of the bell for a while, and then went back to their rooms.

Only then Hastur breathed a sigh of relief, and looked at the source of the bell, and also looked twice. The evening wind blew by, making people shiver.

He retracted his gaze, closed the door, and locked it at the same time. After thinking for a while, he moved the table to the back of the door to block it, and then lifted the kerosene lamp on the table to the ground near the head of the bed.

After doing all this, he glanced at the time, and it was already past two o'clock in the middle of the night.

Go to bed, lie on the quilt, hold the cane in both hands across the chest, and yawn.

He was really sleepy.

Sleeping and waking up, he dreamed that he came to the Hall of Stars and whipped the lamp god again.

……

In the early morning, Hastur was awakened by a violent knock on the door.

He opened his sleepy eyes, glanced at the walking stick clutched tightly to his chest, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Fortunately, nothing unexpected happened last night.

In other words, after I fell asleep last night, did I go to the Hall of Stars to smoke the lamp god?
Hastur frowned slightly. He had been checking in with the lamp god during this time. If one night was missing, there would be no consecutive check-ins.

Boom!Boom!
The sound got louder and louder, and at the same time there was the anxious voice of Lecturer Furren.

Is something really wrong?
Hastur did not delay any longer, but hastily got up and came to the door, moved the table, rearranged it, and then opened the door.

"Teacher, teacher, he has disappeared!" Lecturer Furlun was full of anxiety, his tone was rapid, and his breathing fluctuated.

At Lecturer Furren's side were two workhouse caretakers.

"Speak slowly, why did Professor Wayne suddenly disappear?" Hastur appeased Lecturer Fran's anxiety.

"After I woke up this morning, I wanted to see how the teacher slept last night. When I came to the teacher's door, I reached out and knocked on the door twice. The door opened by itself, and the teacher was no longer in the room. shadow."

"At first, I didn't pay much attention to it. I thought the teacher got up earlier than me and had already gone out for a stroll."

"But after I inquired about it, I found that no one had seen the teacher. I was a little panicked, so I hurriedly asked the people from the workhouse to help me search, but after searching for more than an hour, I didn't see the teacher's shadow. No one saw the teacher."

Lecturer Furren became more and more anxious, and even his forehead was sweating.

Is it really missing?

Or are you just acting?
After listening to Lecturer Furren's narration, Hastur's heart skipped a beat, a little convinced, but a little skeptical.

Last night, the three of them also mentioned that they would use the method of false disappearance to give the police department a reason to come to the workhouse to investigate.

When I woke up in the morning, Professor Wayne disappeared.

Professor Wayne is a professor of law at Backlund University and his teacher. His disappearance also has enough weight for the police department to intervene in the investigation.

Perhaps, Professor Wayne didn't want to trouble himself, so he chose to be the fake missing person.

But when he thought of the weird sound of the bell last night, Hastur was a little flustered, and Lecturer Furren's expression didn't look like it was staged.

"Don't worry, nothing will happen to Professor Wayne." Hastur comforted Lecturer Furren while asking, "Did someone from the dock area look for it?"

A staff member of the workhouse replied: "I have sent someone to look for it, but I haven't received any news yet."

"Has every part of the workhouse been searched?"

"I've searched more than once, but I haven't seen Professor Wayne, and no one has seen him this morning."

"I want to see Dean Dahn."

"Okay, I'll take you there."

Led by the staff of the workhouse, Hastur and Lecturer Furren soon met Dean Dahn.

He also seemed very anxious at the moment, and looked in a bad mood.

Seeing the two of Hastur coming, he put away his angry expression and sighed: "Please rest assured, we will definitely find Professor Wayne, and we will never let him have any accidents."

Hastur's face was ugly, and he said in a deep voice: "If we don't see my most respected teacher by noon at the latest, we will choose to call the police and rely on the strength of the police department to solve this matter."

Regardless of whether Professor Wayne really disappeared, taking advantage of this opportunity to attract the police department to intervene in this matter is the best choice.

"Here, why don't you bother the police department?" Dean Da En's face became even more ugly.

"Then can you make sure you find someone before twelve o'clock?"

Hastur emphasized his tone, and poked his cane twice on the ground, obviously suppressing the anger in his heart and said: "My teacher is an extremely respected law professor. He has trained many outstanding university students. Lawyers, among them students who become judges!"

"I understand, we will definitely deal with this matter!"

Dean Dahn's expression was shocked, obviously surprised by Professor Wayne's weight.

Soon, Dean Dahn ordered the people in the workhouse to find the whereabouts of Professor Wayne separately.

Hastur and Lecturer Furren did not stay quietly in the room waiting for the news, but took a few staff from the workhouse to the dock area to search.

Mainly, Hastur was worried that if Professor Wayne's disappearance was really related to the workhouse, it would be dangerous for them to choose to stay in the workhouse.

Especially when twelve o'clock is approaching, if the workhouse still can't find Professor Wayne, then maybe the two of them will disappear too, so as not to attract the intervention of the police department.

It's not that he wants to think so darkly about people's hearts, but that in the mysterious world, there is always nothing wrong with being careful everywhere.

Even if you don't make mistakes, you may encounter unknown dangers, not to mention your own stupidity.

After eleven o'clock, the entire dock area was almost searched by people from the workhouse. Even many dock area residents participated in the search for Professor Wayne, but no trace of Professor Wayne was found.

What was even more frightening was that among so many pairs of eyes in the dock area, none of them had ever seen Professor Wayne.

Hastur stood among the crowd, looking in the direction of the sunrise workhouse, with a solemn expression.

If Professor Wayne was forced to disappear, then he was most likely imprisoned in the workhouse, and if he disappeared voluntarily, he was also very likely to be hidden in the workhouse.

After all, the number of residents living in the dock area is extremely large, and many people have to get up to work before dawn. It is too difficult to slip out of the dock area under the eyes of so many eyes.

Instead, he hid in the workhouse, and only needed to avoid the first few searches, which would easily create the illusion of darkness under the lights.

Lecturer Furren on the side looked at Hasta with complicated eyes, and hesitated to speak several times.

He really wanted to ask, was all this discussed in advance by his teacher and Mr. Hasta?

Obviously, the script discussed last night was not performed like this!
(End of this chapter)