Sixteen Mile Pier.

The freighters moored on the river of the wharf to load cotton almost blocked the entire river, because there were too many ships loading cotton, too dense, almost all of them were closely connected with each other, and the widest distance was only about one meter.

At ten o'clock in the evening, on the Catherine freighter, the freighter was moored at the outermost part of all the freighters, and the river wind blew from the north, whining and whining.

Captain Mel took a few crew members to the deck to patrol as usual, but he knew that although Shanghai Tang was the most prosperous city in the Far East, there were countless evils hidden behind this prosperity, and the ships parked on the dock often had their goods stolen, especially at night, if there was no one to guard them, those hateful thieves might even drive away for you.

Led by Mel, the crew weaved their way through the gaps in the neatly stacked square-shaped piles of goods, just to see if anyone was hiding in the middle of the piles to steal cotton in the dead of night.

In winter, the sea was as cold as usual, especially in the middle of the night on the river, a biting river wind blew, freezing the crew shivering, and one of the crew members shouted: "Captain, are you okay?" Frozen to death, who else will come and steal now? Aren't you afraid of freezing to death? ”

Mel scolded without looking back: "Don't talk nonsense about him, just follow along, will you freeze to death in just a while?" Hold on to Lao Tzu! ”

During the patrol, Mel was extremely dissatisfied with the appearance of the crew, and he cursed while patrolling, and his swearing could be heard from afar.

After a round of patrols. Mel finally returned to the cabin with the disgruntled crew and got into the hot bed, leaving only a red light on the top of the cockpit flashing to show the ship's existence.

Shortly after Mel and the others returned to the cabin, in the darkness of the night, on the river to the north, a small wooden boat quietly and quickly rowed towards the Catherine freighter. It was just a small fishing boat, very small, without a diesel engine, and there were four people sitting on the small fishing boat, two in groups of two, paddling quickly with wooden oars. The small fishing boat rushed like an arrow, but slowed down as it approached the Catherine.

It was an action group, and after the fishing boat had docked on the Catherine, one of them stayed on the fishing boat to pick it up, and the captain and two other men threw three ropes with iron hooks on the Catherine. After pulling the rope, the iron hook hooked the side of the ship very smoothly, and the three points immediately climbed up the thick rope to the Catherine.

Captain Ang Lee was the first to climb to the deck of the Catherine, and then quickly pulled out two box guns from his waist and squatted on the deck to provide safety cover for the two team members who had not yet come up.

After only two seconds, the other two team members turned over on the deck, and Lee Ang made a few gestures to them, and one of the team members also took out two box cannons to be as vigilant as Lee Ang. Another member of the team pulled out several glass wine bottles from a small backpack behind them, which were filled with clear liquid and had strips of wet cloth stuffed at the mouth. He put the glass bottles together, then took out a metal lighter and lit it and lit the cloth strip at the mouth of a glass bottle, which turned out to be filled with gasoline, and when a glass bottle of gasoline was lit, he threw the glass bottle to the far deck, and the glass bottle fell on the deck and shattered. It burned instantly, and he set fire to the remaining glass bottles one by one and smashed them. The smashed glass bottles spilled gasoline on the deck burned, under the action of the river breeze. The fire spread to the south, and soon the bales of cotton were set on fire.

You must know that cotton is an extremely flammable item, it will be ignited when it touches a spark, and there is no open flame when cotton first burns, but it is a huge quantity, and it is wrapped in cloth bags, and it will soon burn, and it will spread to the entire freighter in just a few breaths.

"It's done, let's withdraw!" Li An greeted, and the three of them slipped off the freighter along the rope and returned to the fishing boat, and the four of them rowed the fishing boat back with wooden oars again.

At this night, the people of the whole Shanghai beach were awakened from their sleep, the river surface by the 16 miles of the wharf was ignited with a sky-high fire, the fire was blown by the river wind, and immediately spread rapidly, but in a moment, all the ships loaded with cotton moored on the river were all burned, forming a huge sea of fire, no ship loaded with cotton was spared, this sea of fire was too big, and all the ships within a few hundred meters of the river were shrouded in it.

The fire set fire to the 16-mile wharf again, and the workers on the wharf were unable to react, and the fire engulfed all the bales of cotton piled up on the shore.

"Jingle bells, jingle bells??????".

Xavier reached out to pick up the phone on the bedside table with a sleepy face and said in a daze: "Hey, I'm Xavier!" ”

A voice about to cry came from the phone: "Boss, it's not good, all the cotton we have docked on the dock and has been loaded has been burned, all on fire, the whole river is on fire, it's over, it's all over??????."

"Snap", the stunned Xavier didn't notice that the phone fell to the ground, he was stunned, and the pupils in his eyes seemed to be out of focus.

Half an hour later, the foreign merchants who got the news rushed over from their residences, they stood on the dock and watched the monstrous fire, but they could not do anything but watch the cotton with a total value of about eight million taels of silver burned to ashes by the fire, and the foreign merchants knelt on the ground one by one and wept bitterly, and the fruits of their hard work for many days were burned by a fire!

"It's Xiao Zhenlei, Xiao Zhenlei must have sent someone to do it, it must be him, I'm going to kill him, this damn guy, if you can't play it, we'll come with us, it's really hateful!" Xavier was so angry on the dock that he didn't burn all the cotton, but the amount of cotton loaded on the ship was also twenty percent, and now the cotton was burned, which means that there was still a shortage of twenty percent!

Cotton was not any other flammable material, it was extremely flammable, but it was not burned, and the cotton, worth about eight million taels of silver, was burned to ashes in less than an hour, and the foreign merchants were paralyzed on the ground of the wharf.

The patrol room has been here for a long time, and now they have intervened in the investigation, Xavier found the French Concession Police Superintendent Lapier, Lapier said: "Mr. Xavier, I express my regret and sympathy for the burning of your cotton, but please rest assured, we will do our best to find out the truth of the matter, if this case is just that the crew accidentally set the cotton on fire, then I can only express regret, but if someone deliberately set the fire, we will definitely bring the arson to justice!" ”

Xavier's affection was so excited that he grabbed Lapier's hand and shouted, "Mr. Superintendent, I know who did it, I know!" ”

"Oh, do you know who did it? Who is so bold? Lapierre asked.

Xavier hurriedly said: "Yes, yes, this matter was done by Xiao Zhenlei, I am sure that he lost to us in the business war of buying cotton, and all the cotton he hoarded in his own hands could not be sold, so he took revenge on us, this must have been done by him!" ”

Lapier asked, "So do you have any evidence?" ”

"Evidence?" Xavier thought about it, he really didn't have any evidence, and he shouted loudly: "I don't have evidence, Mr. Superintendent, do you still need evidence?" It's clear that he did it, and you send someone to arrest him right away!" ”

Hearing this, Lapie shook his head and shrugged his shoulders and said: "Sir, we have to pay attention to evidence in the patrol room, we can't arrest people casually without evidence, and the Xiao Zhenlei you mentioned is not in the French Concession, even if we have evidence to suspect him, it is not easy to move him, I hope you can understand our difficulties, but please rest assured that you and other gentlemen, if there is news, I will inform you as soon as possible!" ”

After Lapier left, Xavier and other foreign businessmen gathered together, and Ralph said with a decadent face: "No way, if this matter is really done by Xiao Zhenlei, he will definitely not leave evidence to be found by the people in the patrol room, we have to wait until the patrol house solves the case, I'm afraid we can only wait until the sun comes out of the west, let's go, go back first!" ”

On December 28, the day after the foreign merchants' cotton was burned, the Daotai Yamen accepted the case of Xiao Zhenlei jointly filed by the bosses of the Shanghai Tang Qian Zhuang and Ticket Number Businesses.

It is said that it is a trial of the court, but in fact, this is just a process of mediation by Daotai Cai Naihuang, the bosses of the money and the ticket industry are at a loss, and they are chasing money from Xiao Zhenlei before the loan is due, which violates the provisions of the contract, according to the provisions of the contract, Xiao Zhenlei has enough reasons to ignore this matter, and can delay the repayment until the final repayment deadline, but due to the adjustment of Daotai Cai Naihuang, Xiao Zhenlei did not do anything wrong, he returned all the loans at the same time, but resolutely refused to pay interest, The reason is that these bosses have violated the contract and must receive a certain punishment, this punishment is not to receive interest on the loan, Cai Naihuang supported Xiao Zhenlei's request, and negotiated with the bosses of these money banks and ticket numbers, those bosses believe that although the cotton of the foreign merchants was burned to a part last night, this is not enough to recover Xiao Zhenlei's losses, and most of the cotton in Xiao Zhenlei's warehouse cannot be sold at all, which has accumulated a lot of funds. Therefore, these bosses agreed to Cai Naihuang's mediation, no interest, only asked Xiao Zhenlei to repay the loan, Xiao Zhenlei had already secretly sold all the cotton he had hoarded to foreigners, although he had collected a lot of cotton in the past three days, but these cotton were only worth seven or eight million taels, and he had enough funds in his hands, so he quickly repaid the loans of these money banks and ticket numbers. (To be continued)