Five hours earlier, in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, Pierre Gauguin opened his window to see the ancient Romanesque columns of the Pantheon. In the living room behind him hangs a splendid and intense oil painting - dozens of indigenous men and women on the island of Tahiti, including young and beautiful naked girls, newborn babies, and old people on the verge of death, with golden skin like countless blooming sunflowers......

On the sofa sat a guest, a man in his forties, with a mustache, a pipe in his mouth, and French with a British accent: "Paul Gauguin was a successful stockbroker when he bought this property in the heart of Paris." ”

"Mr. Maugham, you know my uncle very well." Pierre Gauguin brought coffee to the guests, "I heard that you work for British intelligence. ”

"Well, I'm a spy, but unsuccessful. Two years earlier, I had sent an envoy to Russia to persuade the Kerensky government to continue the war against Germany, but unfortunately the Bolsheviks seized power. William Somerset Maugham, like a true English gentleman, took off his pipe and said, "I have come with the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, but I am more interested in your uncle." I'm working on a book called The Moon and Sixpence, based on Paul Gauguin. ”

"I don't know my uncle. If there are some artistic cells in my veins, it is all in Oriental art - I am an antique dealer who settled in the French Concession in Shanghai. ”

"This is what you have in common – uprooted from your homeland and wandered to the mysterious East. Until the age of thirty-eight, he lived a privileged life here, with a wife and five children. One morning, he met Degas, Manet, and Monet, and decided to say goodbye to the past once and for all. In 1888, he went to Arles, in the south of France, where he lived with Van Gogh for 62 days, and Van Gogh cut off his ear. ”

"Only God knows what happened in those 62 days?"

"Later, your uncle abandoned his wife and went to Tahiti, his Garden of Eden, in the South Pacific, to live with thirteen-year-old girls, like Adam and Eve." Maugham got up from the sofa and turned to look at the painting on the wall, "Monsieur Gauguin, thank you for allowing me to visit. The British delegation had a meeting and I went back to Versailles. ”

Pierre Gauguin politely sent Maugham out of the stairs, then closed the door tightly, wondering: what did the British spy want? Could it be that the British know the secret of the Tomb Beast?

Suddenly, a dagger was pressed against his carotid artery.

Gauguin trembled and said, "Mr. Maugham, please don't play such a joke on me. ”

"I'm not Maugham."

It turned out to be a young girl's voice, more standard French than Maugham's.

Didn't have time to ask, "Who are you"? Pierre Gauguin's hands were tied with ropes, and then his legs were tied, and the whole person was thrown to the floor like a catfish.

In the fear of death, he saw the face of an uninvited guest, an eighteen or nineteen-year-old Oriental girl, wearing men's suspenders, taking off her working-class cap, revealing her jet-black hair that was curled freely.

However, she has a pair of glass-colored eyes, as well as a unique eyebrow and eye contour, and if her skin is a little darker, she looks a little like the Tahitian girl in Gauguin's oil paintings.

"Monsieur Gauguin, don't you recognize me?"

The girl spoke Chinese, and Pierre Gauguin realized the answer: "You...... Ouyang ...... Ouyang Sicong's daughter? ”

"Yes." Ouyang Anna stepped on Gauguin's chest with a big scalp shoe, which made him breathless, and sure enough, she inherited the style of the boss of the Shanghai Tang Green Gang, and she said in fluent French, "I like two writers very much, one is the Frenchman Marquis de Sade, and the other is the Austrian Masoch." The two of them are called sadomasochism by their names. Sade is an S, Masok is an M. ”

"S and M?"

Pierre Gauguin also knew that Ouyang Sicong killed people without blinking, and this little girl was better than blue, and he began to plead in French mixed with Chinese.

Anna took out a whip from her back and swung it twice in mid-air, making a terrifying whistling sound and slamming it into the French man's face. Gauguin's skin was peeled open and she let out a slaughterhouse-like scream before she said lightly: "I'm sorry, I thought you would enjoy this game." ”

Gauguin, who had almost passed out, groaned that everything in the room could be taken away, including Paul Gauguin's famous paintings, which had been offered 100,000 pounds.

Ouyang Anna turned her head to look at the painting on the wall: "What's the name?" ”

"Where do we come from, who are we, and where are we going?"

"Are you playing a pantomime with me?"

She whipped the painter's own nephew again, and Pierre Gauguin screamed: "No...... No...... No...... That's the name of this painting by my uncle. ”

Where do we come from, who we are, and where are we going?

"Very interesting! But the painting is full of the smell of death. ”

When Anna was a student at a church school in Shanghai, she was so obsessed with Gauguin's paintings that she secretly copied them countless times, but this was the first time she had seen it. Suddenly, she felt that the scenery in the painting resembled Mt. Dharma, and the wheat-skinned figure resembled a sea lady crawling naked from the East China Sea, like a flower blooming in a pile of bones.

When she put away her whip, the Frenchman gasped and said, "My uncle made this painting more than twenty years ago when he heard of the death of his little daughter in Tahiti and was so grieved that he committed suicide. ”

Ouyang Anna felt that the time for interrogation had come: "Why didn't you ask me why I came to you to find you?" ”

"I ......"

"Well, Mr. Gauguin, let me ask you one more question - two years ago, you came to our house to buy a tomb beast of the Tang Dynasty, you won't forget, right?"

"That night, I remembered, I was an antique dealer, this was my profession."

"Half a month ago, we met again under the Statue of Liberty in New York, and you followed the police to take away a tomb beast named Quadukhim, where is it now?"

"Miss Anna, so you're here for this! I admit that this is a national treasure of China, but I am only working for the French government. My good friend, the military attaché of the French Embassy in China and a great sinologist, ordered me to do so. ”

Sure enough, it was Birchhe! Anna remained silent and stepped on Gauguin's neck with the sole of her shoe: "Where is the four-winged angel?" ”

"Versailles."

He said the address of the military base, which was only two or three kilometers away from the Luteti Hotel, where the Chinese delegation was stationed.

"Miss Anna, I advise you not to take any chances. The place was impregnable, guarded by the standards of a world war, and anyone who trespassed would be killed. ”

"Thanks for the reminder!" Ouyang Anna removed her shoes from Gauguin, "In half an hour, I will call the concierge downstairs, and he will find out that you will untie you again." But if I find out that you have deceived me, then I will come back with my two friends, the Marquis de Sade and Mr. Masoch. Good bye! ”

She ran out of the building at a fast pace and back into the sun in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. Look up at the dome of the Pantheon, also known as the Pantheon, where Voltaire, Rousseau, Lagrange and Victor Hugo are buried......

A few days ago, Qin Beiyang and her toured the scenery of Paris, and when they passed by the Pantheon, they sighed - compared with the Chinese mausoleums scattered among the dragon veins in the mountains and fields, so many great people were buried under a building in the downtown of Paris, but there were no gold and silver treasures to accompany the burial, let alone the tomb beasts. In other words, the legacy of these tomb owners is the enlightenment, science and humanity they brought to France and the world.

Ouyang Anna, dressed in men's clothes, rode heroically on the bicycle, her long curly hair leaking out from under the peaked cap, making French men turn back countless times along the way.

She rode across the bridge over the Seine to the Bois de Boulogne on the western outskirts. It is not only the lobe of Paris, but also the place where the filth and dirt are hidden, and the technical university of Paris.

She found the Aviation Department building, which had an improvised airstrip in front of it, and several trainer planes were landing. She did not forget the promise she had made half an hour earlier, borrowing the telephone from the building and calling the concierge of Pierre Gauguin's house.

"Anna!"

Chinese words sounded behind her, and she turned around to see the skinny Qian Ke, slapped him on the shoulder and said, "Hey, what I'm looking for is you!" ”

Qian Ke had just arrived at the Department of Aeronautics of the Technical University of Paris, and at the same time was working part-time in an aircraft factory affiliated with the university, and the oil stain on his face had not yet been wiped off.

"Something happened in Beiyang."

"Who did that?"

"Your old acquaintance - Dr. Karl Holstein."

Anna recounted the story succinctly. This morning, she changed into men's clothes and came out of the Chinese delegation's residence, carrying a dagger and a horsewhip, and sneaked into Pierre Gauguin's home. She knew that Qin Beiyang's disappearance was because of the Tomb Beast. And the four-winged angel was transported to France by Gauguin, and the two things must be connected.

"The Doctor is also in Paris?"

"I guess, he is in Versailles, with Qin Beiyang."

Qian Ke was also very smart, and pointed to the aircraft factory: "Anna, you came to me to let me take you in?" ”

As he spoke, another colorful biplane landed on the runway, but the green, white and red tricolor was emblazoned on its belly, instead of the French blue-white-red tricolor. Enthusiastic applause from the cadets rang out all around to greet the mustachioed pilot who climbed out of the cabin.

"Who is he?"

"Giuseppe Caproni." "He was the youngest Italian aircraft designer, the greatest pilot, the hero of the World War, who shot down eighty-one German and Austrian planes in the Alps. He is now teaching aircraft design at the Polytechnic University of Paris, and I will be following him in building airplanes. ”

"Money!"

Kaproni pushed the cadets away and walked straight for Chanko. He was handsome, in his thirties, with Italian black hair, gray eyes, and a thick black beard, and every time he skimmed over the fields, he would startle the screams of the village women.

Of course, the target of the Italian amorous breed is not Qian Ke, but a Chinese girl wearing suspender overalls and a peaked cap on her head, standing in the wind.

The Prince of the Sky knelt down on one knee before Anna, took her slender hand, and said in French: "Beautiful girl, my sun, allow your servant to send you a pure greeting. ”

Just as Caproni was about to kiss the back of Ouyang Anna's hand in accordance with European etiquette, a horsewhip slapped him on the head.