Chapter 114: Providing Him With Some Evidence
Arriving at the villa, the group of children gleefully began their treasure hunt game.
"Let Hassashi join us!" Mitsuhiko suggested. "We can give it a share of the treasure we find too."
"Okay, okay!"Hassashi actively poked its head out. "Toys they don't want are free, right, Master?"
"Go if you want to play." Chi Feichei putHassashi down.
"Hmm... let me see, there's Professor Agasa's scent,"Hassashi immediately flicked its tongue, picking up Professor Agasa's scent, and swayed twice. "This... could it be in that room?"
Chi Feichei: "..."
Calling onHassashi for a treasure hunt basically made decoding the cipher unnecessary...
"Forget it, let's leave some challenge for them!"Hassashi lay down beside them again, following the three children around and watching them rummage through things.
Professor Agasa explained the situation of the villa to Chi Feichei.
This was a villa left behind by a wealthy uncle of Professor Agasa, but it was scheduled for demolition next month. Before the demolition, he wanted the children of the Junior Detective League to come over and play an adventure game.
As Professor Agasa spoke, he turned his head and saw the group of children rummaging around randomly. He reminded them, "You can't just rummage around aimlessly like this!"
"But..."
Genta wanted to retort, but Professor Agasa cut him off, feigning mystery.
"You just need to pay more attention to your surroundings, and you should discover important clues."
"That's right, that's right," Conan prompted directly out of boredom, taking two steps forward. "For example, this string of characters deliberately carved into the ground beneath my feet..."
The three children immediately gathered around withHassashi.
Ai Haibara looked at it, yawned, then turned to look at Chi Feichei. "This cipher, it's obvious the Professor came up with it himself. You weren't involved, were you?"
"Ai-chan, what do you mean by that..." Professor Agasa was speechless. He suspected Ai Haibara was criticizing him, but he had no proof.
"If Chi Feichei-niisan was involved, it wouldn't be this simple," Ai Haibara said directly.
"Sim- simple?" Professor Agasa was deeply struck. He turned around and found Conan gone. When he found him outside the room, he saw Conan coming out with a pensive expression, and his heart relaxed. "How is it? Did I stump you this time too? It's no wonder, after all, I thought of this for three days and three nights!"
"If you're talking about that treasure chest, I already found it under the bed in the bedroom. I was worried they'd find it too easily, so I even covered it with a cloth for you and pushed it further under the bed," Conan said honestly, giving him no face at all.
"Well, thank you then!" Professor Agasa gave a dry laugh, speechless inside. Was his cipher really that simple?
Chi Feichei also saw the meaning of the cipher. In fact, the methods for solving text ciphers are nothing more than combinations of sound, conversion, character dissection, and rearrangement. If one understood Japanese, that cipher was indeed not difficult.
"However, what I find strange is that there seems to be another mystery left in the villa," Conan took out a coin from his pocket. "I found this in the corner of the room's floor, a one-yen coin. When I found it, there was already a thick layer of dust on it, and there were no traces of a coin rolling nearby..."
"Fake," Chi Feichei glanced at it. "Excellent craftsmanship."
"Fa- fake?" Professor Agasa was puzzled.
"Professor, you'll know if you compare it with a one-yen coin you have," Conan handed the coin to Professor Agasa. "It's thinner than a normal one-yen coin and also a bit smaller. It must be a replica someone carved."
"In the years the villa has been uninhabited, someone has entered here and stayed for a while," Chi Feichei looked towards the books in the corner. "They didn't stay in the living room for long, but they took books from the living room to read. The character '國' carved on the coin was used on coins many years ago. It's an elderly person who has been hiding here, not in contact with the outside world."
Conan immediately went to flip through those books. "Hmm, there are white hairs in the books, and also aluminum shavings from carving the coin. Perhaps he carved the coin to pass the time while reading. Furthermore, it would be impossible to carve such a faithful replica in a short time, indicating he did indeed live here for a long time..."
Professor Agasa rubbed his head. "But no one should be living here..."
"The question now is, is this elderly person the only one who lived here?" Conan pondered. It was indeed strange for an unoccupied house to suddenly show signs of being lived in.
"I think there might have been a child too," Mitsuhiko walked over holding a vase, turning its base over for Conan to see. "I just found this. Strange patterns of stars, sun, and moon are drawn on the bottom of the vase. It must have been done by a child, right?"
Conan took it and froze on the spot. These regular patterns...
"Oh, I saw those patterns too just now," Genta said, going to get the candlestick next to the fireplace. "Look, it's drawn on the bottom of the candlestick too!"
"I found some too," Ayumi ran to get a plate from the cabinet. "There are some on the bottom of the plate too! It must be a naughty child!"
"Don't mind those," Mitsuhiko said. "Let's continue solving the cipher on the floor!"
The three children left, and Professor Agasa was puzzled. "That's strange. My uncle didn't have any children..."
"It wasn't left by a child," Chi Feichei said. "A child wouldn't draw them so regularly and neatly, like dancing figures."
"Dancing figures?" Professor Agasa was puzzled.
Ai Haibara looked at Chi Feichei with half-lidded eyes. "You're not a Sherlock Holmes fan too, are you?"
"I've read it," Chi Feichei could only say. He wasn't a fan of anyone, but flipping through books like that was beneficial.
"Yes, the dancing figures mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes novel are a cipher meant to look like children's scribbles!" Conan compared the patterns on the bottom of the vase, candlestick, and plate, his gaze captivated. "After comparing the positions of the three types of patterns, you can see that the patterns in the three rows to the right of each arrangement are the same. That is to say, this is indeed a cipher with a certain rule!"
Ai Haibara's mouth twitched slightly as she watched Conan's state. Looking again, Chi Feichei silently took out his phone beside her. Before she could even remind Conan, Conan was already twitching.
"Right! This is definitely a cipher!" Conan said excitedly, his glasses reflecting light. He trembled with excitement, laughing 'hehehe...' as if he had completely broken down.
Chi Feichei silently recorded.
"You seem quite happy," Professor Agasa asked Conan. "Have you already cracked the cipher?"
"Not yet," Conan's tone still carried a strange excitement. "I'm still completely baffled. The coin and the old man are still a mystery for now. But Professor Agasa, I'm truly excited!"
"Uh, before you get too excited..." Professor Agasa pointed at Chi Feichei over there.
Conan turned his head and saw a familiar phone camera pointed at him. He immediately ran forward. "Hey, hey, what are you doing secretly filming me again?"
Chi Feichei had already stopped recording. He sent the entire video file to an email address and showed it to Conan.
An ominous feeling welled up in Conan's heart. "You didn't send it to Dr. Fukuyama, did you?"
"Yes, to provide him with some evidence that you're not normal." Chi Feichei picked up his phone and looked at Conan's manic expression in the video, feeling like he was looking at a lunatic.
"I'm just excited!" Conan quickly explained. "The more I don't know what's going on, the more I feel that irrepressible curiosity leaping in my heart!"
"I've already sent it," Chi Feichei reminded him.
Conan's face immediately darkened with a black line. He understood. Chi Feichei meant that if he wanted to explain, he should go explain to Dr. Fukuyama, right?
That bastard!
End of Chapter