Granville's estate

After hearing the word "Dyefang", as if he suddenly remembered something, Alred's face turned pale all of a sudden, and his originally strong composure seemed to be suddenly disintegrated a lot.

"The dyeing workshop... yes, next to No. 150 Moore Street, is old Henry's dyeing workshop."

He murmured to Louis that it was such a short sentence that he even had to pause several times before he could finish it.

"So, Sologne used the cover of the dyeing workshop to make fake tea?"

Louis asked in a low voice, he couldn't help but think of the last time he saw Sologne in District No.12, Sologne once told them that the dyeing workshop next to their warehouse would deduct their food from the wages of the workers The money for the bread - Louis and Alred didn't pay much attention to this trivial matter at the time. Who would have thought that Sologne could talk to them without changing his face while he was already engaged in illegal activities? Thinking that a seemingly ordinary dyeing workshop can also become a hotbed of crime in the hands of caring people!

"Oh, Monsieur de Granville, you don't have to pretend as if you don't know anything!"

Bernard cried out, groping in the pockets of his baggy tailcoat, and tossed a dirty gray dungaree sack—about half a foot long and several Everywhere has been stained a strange mottled grey-green, as though a distraught painter had poured the ugly paint on the canvas indiscriminately: "Look what you've done, look what you've sold for so much. These fence leaves of mine! These things are not worth a penny, and you use them to cheat me out of huge sums of francs, and you are going to use them to destroy the Jacques Bernard firm that has been painstakingly managed for decades Good word of mouth!"

Alred grabbed the coarse cloth bag, he only opened it to take a look at the contents, and his face became very ugly: "Mr. Du Clermont, this is not me and Sologne Grostedt Tea purchased from Mr Nicolas and sold to Mr Bernard."

As he spoke, he poured out the contents of the coarse cloth pocket on the table: it was a large handful of wet "Chinese green tea", the color was mottled and uneven, and it looked like it was wetted with water. The leaves are rubbed vigorously on white paper or cloth, so that they will stretch out while leaving the dye color, showing the characteristics of leaves that are different from real tea leaves.

"Aha! Of course it's not real tea, it's just blackthorn leaves dyed with a patina."

Contemptuously, Jacques Bernard said as he paced beside them like a hyena circling its prey: "These things are dyed with a patina to look like tea leaves, yes, you make them very well." So realistic that it fooled my eyes once, but these little tricks can't fool old Jacques forever! Just soak these fake tea leaves in water and rub them on white paper, and they will leave a dye on the paper The color. Look at it, look at what all these damn dyes you use have dyed my pockets!"

"I have already said that this is not the tea that I bought from Mr. Nicholas and then sold to you. The tea I bought from Nicholas is real high-quality Chinese green tea, not these dyed trees leaf."

"What?! De Granville, after your accomplice escaped, do you want to pretend that you don't know anything, so that I can suffer from being dumb?"

Bernard pointed at Alred angrily, and his whole face turned red with anger: "Mr. Inspector, you see, this is the glory of this gentleman's so-called nobility! A hard-working small businessman, Out of respect and trust for the son of an earl with a noble family background, he signed the contract without doubt, but in the end he suffered such shameless deception——as the saying goes, the one that shines , not necessarily real gold!"

"Please calm down, Mr. Bernard, things are not what you think." Louis said, because this matter is really important, he had to temporarily endure the anger of his friend being so accused by others , and turned to Officer Claremont and asked: "Mr. Officer, this Mr. Bernard's accusation came too suddenly. My friend and I were unprepared for this, and neither knew what happened on Moore Street. What happened, and I don’t know how to justify myself. I sincerely ask you to tell us the whole story, so that we can know where we have encountered deception and traps.”

"What do you mean, are you saying that I am slandering you!"

Bernard looked like he was about to explode, but when Officer Clermont waved his hand to signal him to be quiet for the time being, although he was very reluctant, he temporarily kept his mouth shut.

"Sir, if I may take the liberty of asking, what is your relationship to M. de Granville?"

"I am his friend, sir, and my name is Louis du Farentin."

"That's it, Mr. Farentin, then I advise you not to get involved in this matter easily. If I were you, I would walk out of this house immediately. However, if you are very grateful for this If you are interested, you can listen to it, this is a very sophisticated crime, and it can even be said that this is one of the most sophisticated crimes I have seen in Paris."

"Please allow me to listen to your instructions, Mr. Inspector."

Constable Guillonet du Clermont then drew up a chair and sat down, and put his beaver-hair hat on the walnut table, but kept his right hand hidden in the pocket of his long overcoat, and He was also sitting right in the way of the window.

"Let's put it this way, Monsieur Farentin, and Monsieur de Granville." The police officer said very briefly, looking at Alred with his gray-blue eyes: "After Monsieur Jacques Bernard reported the crime to us , Another police officer and I went to his business to check and confirmed his report is true. The counterfeit tea in your hand is part of the tea sent from 150 [-] Moore Street, and the tea has been sealed. "

"And when we went to No. 150 Moore Street and prepared to question Sologne Grostedt, he jumped out of the second-floor window of the warehouse and escaped, and hid very quickly. We have reason to suspect that he The escape route had already been planned; then, in a room on the third floor of No. 150 Moore Street, we found a ledger recording the scale of counterfeiting and the direction of outflow of goods. When Sologne Grostedt was escaping Too much haste to not take it away."

"According to this ledger, it can be determined that, over a period of several months, 150 Two Moore Street carried out a months-long underground criminal operation. Sologne Grostedt divided the crime into seemingly insignificant In several unrelated parts, he procured elderberry, sloe, and hawthorn leaves in bulk from two farmers on the outskirts of Paris who did not know what the leaves were going to be used for when they were collected; In a few days, the collected leaves were sent to two other farmers. These two people were responsible for sorting out the thorns and sundries in the leaves, and then boiled the leaves, put them on the iron plate to dry, and at the same time they kept washing the leaves with their hands. Rubbing the dried leaves curls them up so they look more like tea leaves; after these two processes are complete, the fake tea leaves are sent to the dye house in Moore Street, where they are dyed with patina and left in the middle of the night. At that time, it was moved into the warehouse at No. 150 Moore Street and sold as different grades of Chinese tea."

"It has to be said that this is a very ingenious method of deception. The people who collect the leaves think that these leaves will be used as fuel; the farmers in the second process do not know what they are doing. They only know that they are doing it for a few sous a day. Head down to work; the owner of the dyeing workshop even claimed that he was not making fake tea, but just used verdigris to "rejuvenate" the already not so bright tea, just like housewives would cook vegetable soup It’s like adding something like this to make the vegetables look more green.”

Every word and even every word of Officer Claremont hit the hearts of Louis and Alred, who were still lucky, like a heavy hammer.After hearing the whole of Sologne's criminal methods, the two friends couldn't help trembling. They didn't expect Sologne to be so bold-in this illegal act, all the chains were broken. As Police Officer Clermont said, this is a very delicate and ingenious method of committing crimes; and judging from the behavior of jumping out of the window and fleeing as soon as he found the police officer coming, all Sologne's actions are It was premeditated, and maybe even when he bought the batch of tea, Alred had already fallen into his trap.

"Mr. Police Officer, maybe you will think this is sophistry, but I can swear that my friend was also deceived by Sologne Grostedt." Louis felt that his voice was hoarse, and he prayed earnestly: "Sir, I sincerely request you to conduct a more detailed investigation, and do everything in your power to arrest that liar and bring him to justice, so as to prove my friend's innocence."

"Yes, Mr. Clermont, I would swear on my family's honor that I was not aware of all the crimes that Grostedt committed, and not only that, but he also took it from me in the name of buying new goods. A lot of money."

Allred said that he looked like he was about to be crushed by this harsh reality, but in order not to insult the dignity of his father and family, he had to cheer up: "Yes, I did talk to Suo. Rogne Grostedt has business cooperation, but I was also completely deceived by him. I know nothing about the so-called tea fraud, and I don’t even know the fraudulent methods and links he uses. If it weren’t for you ’s arrival revealed all of this, and I’m still kept in the dark.”

Hearing these words, Jacques Bernard looked at Louis, and then at Alred, with a hypocritical and complacent smile on his face, as if he was very happy to see a nobleman of considerable status being honored because of him. Forced into a dire situation.

As for the request of Louis and Allred, the police officer Guillonet du Clermont was not moved.

"Mr. de Granville, on the contract in Mr. Bernard's hands, the names of you and Sologne Grostedt were signed respectively. The latter has absconded, and all the existing evidence and witnesses can identify him. There was a crime. Do you think that when you go to court, the judge will believe that you really didn't know about it?"