usatvline Chapter 136 The Mystery of the Dock 3
Chapter 136 The Mystery of the Dock 3
Its daybreak.
It was gloomy outside, and even after daybreak, there was little light inside the warehouse.
Chen Shi and Sui Ying opened the warehouse door together.
A layer of white snow covered the outside. Suiying said cautiously, "Don't move around. Look around for footprints."
"Yes."
If no footprints were found, the person is most likely still there.
This discovery sent chills down everyone's spines.
Suiying went out to find Manager Jiang, while Chen Shi led his men to continue searching for people in the warehouse.
"Search! Search box by box, I refuse to believe it!"
Shen Lan and Xiao Ji stood side by side on the second floor. From upstairs, they could see everything happening below.
"Sir, how can someone disappear without a trace? Have you ever seen a case like this before?"
"A locked-room murder case, where the killer kills without leaving a trace. To solve this case, we must find out how she escaped."
Shen Lan stared at the top of the warehouse for a while, then climbed up the pillars to the roof beams and inspected the roof piece by piece.
Such a sealed warehouse can only be accessed from the sky or underground; otherwise, how could a person walk through the walls?
Sui Feng then jumped onto the roof from outside and searched around as well.
Manager Jiang jogged over and, seeing their commotion, asked in bewilderment, "What's the matter, gentlemen?"
Chen Shi rushed over angrily, "You're here just in time! Tell me quickly, is there a secret passage in your warehouse?"
"No...no, why would you ask that, sir?"
"One of our men is dead! He died right here in this warehouse, and the killer has vanished!"
"Someone died?" Manager Jiang was shocked and quickly apologized, "Sirs, I didn't know. My warehouse has always been safe and sound."
He should never have rented to these officials; now he's in legal trouble, and all his work this year has been for nothing.
Seeing the officers inspecting the box, he followed behind, instructing them, "Be gentle...be gentle..."
Manager Jiang paced back and forth nervously, his gaze fixed on their actions of opening the boxes.
Everyone assumed he was nervous about the porcelain, and they all slowed down their movements accordingly.
"Manager Jiang, these boxes are too heavy. Couldn't you put less stuff in them?"
Manager Jiang chuckled and said, "We can save costs by loading more, and the workers at the docks are very strong."
The box was indeed full of porcelain; it couldn't possibly hide a person.
"Sirs, there are no empty boxes here. Could it be... that person has already escaped?"
Chen Shi drew his knife and held it to his neck. "The door was closed. We didn't hear it open. We kept watch until dawn. How did she escape? Where did she go?"
"This... I don't know either."
"Boss, there's a mouse hole here!" A beam of light shone in from the hole in the corner.
If the box hadn't been moved, we wouldn't have discovered the hole.
Chen Shi slapped him, "Are you crazy? Even a dog can't squeeze through this rat hole, how could a person possibly squeeze through?"
Shen Lan jumped down from the roof beam, startling Steward Jiang.
It's hard to believe that even this pretty young girl possesses such extraordinary skills.
How could the murderer kill and escape silently amidst so many skilled individuals? What an amazing person he must be.
"Nothing was found up there, not even footprints."
There was a thick layer of dust on the roof beams; if someone had escaped from there, they would have left footprints.
The wind came in from outside and said they hadn't found anything on the roof.
"What the hell! Where did he go? A perfectly healthy person just vanished like that?"
Xiao Ji came down from the second floor and instructed Shen Lan: "Draw a portrait of Miao Niang and have Constable Chen take men to the dock to inquire about it."
"Okay." Shen Lan took out her tools and quickly drew a portrait of Miao Niang.
Chen Shi glanced at it and exclaimed in amazement, "It's so similar!"
He hurriedly led his men out to search, and he also took Steward Jiang with him, as this was the environment he was most familiar with.
Shen Lan walked to the small hole, which was about the size of a bowl and was indeed impossible for a person to get out of.
When the entire warehouse had been searched and the person was still nowhere to be found, the officers panicked.
"This is unbelievable, it can't be true."
"With so many of us sleeping together, even if a ghost came, it wouldn't be able to kill someone silently."
"Yes, yes, that's impossible. There were sounds coming downstairs and opening the door. How did she escape?"
Faced with a series of puzzles, even Xiao Ji, let alone the officials, couldn't figure them out for a while.
"We've checked above, see if there's a secret passage."
The officials took wooden sticks and began to tap every inch of the ground.
Shen Lan slowly walked along the shelf, then compared it with the location on the second floor and adjusted her position accordingly.
She had a guess.
If the sound of people going down the stairs that we first heard last night wasn't made by their people, then an outsider must have sneaked in.
But what was he doing upstairs?
Did he kill the person or was it Miao Niang who did it?
Why did Miao Niang secretly leave?
"This place is empty!" an official shouted.
Everyone quickly gathered around.
He pushed the person aside with the wind, squatted down, and tapped the ground with his hand.
The sound is definitely wrong; the bottom is empty.
He took a step back and slowly felt his way along the ground until he found a small ring. He pulled hard, and a wooden plank opened, revealing the stairs below.
"Wait!" Shen Lan walked over and looked up. This spot was very close to where she slept.
Below is also a wooden staircase, but it's unclear where it leads.
"Suifeng, you and Miss Shen go out and take a look. If you encounter any danger, evacuate immediately."
The two agreed and walked down the stairs one after the other.
Shen Lan noticed that the stairs made a sound as she went down with the wind, but she could no longer hear the sound after she deliberately walked lightly.
"Miss Shen, please slow down." Sui Feng walked ahead, holding a torch.
Shen Lan followed behind him, looking around the passage.
The stairs were short, leading down to a narrow, secret passage. Even someone as small as Sui Feng couldn't lift his head.
They kept walking outwards, and it took them at least fifteen minutes to find the exit.
The exit was also covered by a wooden board.
Sui Feng waited until Shen Lan was ready to attack before gently pushing away the wooden board.
"Cluck cluck cluck..." A chicken head looked at them.
The two crawled out of the secret passage and discovered that it was a family's chicken coop.
Are there ordinary residents at Ji Yan Wharf?
They hadn't had time to look around after landing last night, assuming it was an abandoned dock with only inns.
"I'll go inside and take a look. You go outside and see where it leads," Shen Lan said softly.
"Okay, stay safe."
The two split up, one going in and the other out.
The house wasn't big; it consisted of only two or three cramped rooms inside and out, and we finished looking at it quickly.
no one.
In this kind of weather, theoretically very few people should be going out.
Furthermore, she saw a burnt stove and leftover food in the kitchen, indicating that the homeowner was there in the morning.
She stepped out the door and saw the wide river in the distance; the dock was not far away either.
Sui Feng ran back and said, "There are still some houses like this scattered around here. I heard that the people who live here are all looking for work at the docks."
"You stay here and wait for the rabbit to come to the tree stump. The owner of this house is very suspicious. He probably hasn't realized that the secret passage has been discovered yet. I'll go back and report to the lord."
Sui Feng thought it was feasible.
"If the people living here are the murderers, then Miao Niang must have just escaped through the secret passage."
"We'll know the truth once we find the person."