The second episode of the battle of the Capitol Hill (21) - photographer

☆☆☆

The diary above was written a few hours ago. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. biqUgE。 info We went out all afternoon but are home now. I had plenty of time before dinner was ready.

I'm sitting here in this journal, and I'm going to write:

The table I was sitting at was on the edge of a support column. As my eyes turned, I realized that on all four sides of the pillar, there was a decorative painting. There are only two colors in black and white, and a silhouette of a black head is painted on the white background, which is very abstract. It was the profile of a man with a three-masted galleon on his head, which had replaced a top hat. Yes, the human brain should be a sailing ship, I thought to myself.

I was so focused on the painting that I didn't know when I heard the legs of ......my chair sizzling on the floor, and I realized that I didn't know when someone walked in and sat down across from me.

"Who are you?" I asked.

He smiled, and instead of answering my question, he reached out and turned on the switch of the lamp on the table.

I was stunned.

If you want to challenge the person on the other side of the table, you only need to light the lamp, which is the rule of "face-to-face".

Facing the man sitting across from me, I began to beat the drum in my heart, is he the one who tested me? Or is he a candidate for membership like me? I secretly cursed myself in my heart for not being promising! What's wrong with you? Despite all my courage, I was still a little nervous, and the hand on my lap trembled uncontrollably, and my palms were sweating.

What question is he going to make? Let me compose a poem on the spot, or is it a logic question? Or is it a philosophical question about life? What if he wants to make things difficult for me?

Another voice in my heart was shouting: You just said that you are not afraid of any challenge, and you want to be a cowardly coward?

Of course not! I thought about it. So he sat down opposite him, and his waist was straightened.

He just looked at me, motionless. According to common sense, staring at a lady like this is very rude and presumptuous. But his gaze was even more presumptuous, and it was directed at me.

I, too, met his gaze without flinching.

He looks younger than me. His facial features are upright, his eyes are deep, his temples are slightly hair lossy, and his chin is powerful, which is more suitable for the style of older men. He was also dressed in peculiar fashion, like a European one. To put it bluntly, it looks a bit sissy.

Suddenly, a hallucination came out of nowhere. I saw a woman—she walked to the shade of a tree, turned her head to the man who was standing with her back to her, and he was the man who was now sitting across from me. Her hand slid lightly over the man's chin, looking very surprised, as if a smooth chin was a very strange thing.

Liz's words suddenly rang in my ears, "I know someone with great photography skills, he might be able to help you, and you're not a stranger to this person." ”

I realized that these eyes were very familiar, and the man in the elevator just now had the same eyes.

I smiled and said, "William, if you keep pretending to be a ghost like this, Alice will dislike you." ”

Now it was the turn of the man on the other side to be surprised, and he asked, "Oh! What is wrong with me for you to see?"

"Beard!"

"Beard?" he touched his smooth chin, a little incredulous, "isn't that shaved off?"

"When will your 'beard quirk' be changed? Who in the whole Harvard student doesn't know that they have a professor who likes to have a strange beard? Also, that beard just now is too exaggerated!"

I looked at him, this man named William James (8), who married my friend Alice. William always had a strange beard, so much so that he shaved his beard and showed a handsome face, and I didn't even recognize it!

He asked thoughtfully, "But you didn't recognize me from my fake beard just now, did you?"

I didn't answer. Yes, I just had a hallucination. Even from the flashing image I just had, I could know a lot of things. For example, the paintbrush in William's hand, the paint on his arm. Emily's thin voice calls him "my professor". Even more far-reaching, his father and mother, and other things, even he himself did not wish to remember. Pictures quietly appeared in front of my eyes. A wide and boundless Grand Canal, a canvas, a yellow duck, a faded photograph, a straightforward love letter.

These colors and patterns are his life.

I sighed, even though I didn't know what was going on, and I didn't want to be the subject of his research yet.

I closed my eyes and gathered my spirits, and returned to the subject, I was here to solve the puzzle - judging by William's attitude, he should not be a candidate, but a tester, I don't know when he became a member of the Saturday Club, the secrecy is really well done, I just passed the letter with Alice, she didn't mention it, so it shows that she doesn't know anything.

"I've shaved my beard, I've put on makeup, I've changed my look, and I don't even recognize Alice, how can you see it at a glance?

He asked noisily, interrupting my train of thought, and I had to say something crucial to shut him up. I said, "Before you graduated from medical school, you went on an expedition to Brazil with Mr. Agassis and Liz, right?"

William was stunned, as if he didn't expect me to ask, and he nodded.

"On the way to the expedition, you fell ill with smallpox, and only came back halfway. These are all things that Alice later told me in a letter, and few outsiders know about it, "But not only did you have smallpox, but you also hurt your leg." ”

Hearing what I said, he was clearly unprepared. But my next words made his eyes widen even more.

"Didn't you notice? Although your leg injury has completely recovered, when you walk, you always dare not struggle, so that you go deeper and lower step by step. ”

William stood up and took a few steps back and forth, and he asked, "What are you kidding, why don't I think so?" You mean I'm crippled?"

"It's a subtle difference, but I can see it!" I looked up at him and said, "it's psychological, you switched from chemistry to biomedical because you listened to Mr. Agassius! When you came back from Brazil, you took a leave of absence on the grounds of ill health, or was it because you were depressed? I think it was probably because you felt that you had let Mr. Agassius down. However, the knot in your heart is because of that broken leg. Does it remind you of your own father? Are you afraid of losing a leg like him? Are you afraid that the world will compare you to you, or do you simply feel that you can't surpass your father? Fortunately, you didn't give up medicine like you gave up painting, otherwise I would never have let my friend marry you!"

William James stood motionless, looked at me in amazement, and said, "I've always been studying other people's psychological phenomena and trying to analyze people's deep psychology, but I didn't expect that I had been analyzed so thoroughly!

He applauded as he spoke.

I snorted coldly twice and said, "Come on, William." I know your purpose, stop trying to distract me, it's not working for me now!"

"Shamrock, what are you talking about? I don't understand at all!"

I didn't answer his words, and recalled the sentence that followed the puzzle:

The_great_PROFESSOR,strong,broad-shouldered,square,

In_life\'s_richnoontide,joyous,debonair......

Using three sets of adjectives to describe the greatest professor always feels overwhelming. And why is the word "professor" all capitalized? It is true that most of the main members of the Saturday Club are professors from Harvard, but there is no need to mark them so deliberately. It must have an ulterior motive. I took a closer look at the sentence below, which is actually two groups of six adjectives opposite!

Suddenly, I muttered, "Could it be that 'The Professor' refers to the Chaumatt Peninsula?"

There were originally three mountains on the Chaumat Peninsula, the Cops Mountain, the Fort Mountain and the Mount Simont. Boston, founded by the Puritans, was divided into three districts with these three mountains—the Northrend, Downtown, and Beacon Hill areas. Parker's Cottage is located right in the heart of the city, so to speak, in a broad-shouldered location.

I stole a glance at William next to me, and he blinked, and an eerie light slipped through his eyes.

Doubts crossed my mind, didn't I?

Suddenly, I jumped up in my chair and patted my head and said, "Definitely not!

I told Liz that I was struggling with my photography skills. And she's not one to beat around the bush, so she's already told me all I need to know -- meeting time, Saturday, place, Parker's Cottage! Someone I want to meet, an acquaintance!

"Actually, even if I couldn't find the poem behind the card, I would eventually find it. But the card says the last thing I need to know!He's a good photographer, so he has to be able to help me!" I looked William up and down, and said back, "As for you, my 'great painter', your aesthetic is really terrifying. Fortunately, you have self-knowledge and have given up painting, and I don't dare to learn photography from you!

"Hey, it hurts so much to say that to my face!" William protested.

"The last line of the poem has already debunked the mystery for me. Another pun!"

How_will_her_realm_be_darkened,losing_thee,

Her_darling,whom_we_call_our_AGASSIZ!

"'Reign of darkness' can also be understood as 'technology in the darkroom'. It was also a prophecy that he wanted to tell me that I would be fascinated by his photographic skills and that he would be affectionately known as 'Everybody's Agassi' by the members of the Saturday Club. I took a deep breath and told the mystery, "So, the person I'm going to meet with is a member of the Agassis family!"

I turned my head to look at William, who had already put away his smile, stood very formally, nodded in a direction with his head, and then said, "He has been waiting for you for a long time, go!"

I looked in the direction he was pointing, and it was the staircase that led to the upper floor, leading to the "Wanderer's House".

I walked slowly towards the stairs and pushed open the door at the end of the stairs, my heart beating wildly in my chest.

The front of the room was barried by a wooden wall, blocking the view. In the center of the wall hangs a double-headed lamp, and golden light shines on the wooden wall. On the walls, there are many frames of small size, some rectangular and some oval, densely hung all over. The figures in the painting are only silhouettes of black figures, with the figures of men and women. I suddenly remembered the question I had asked Mr. Agassi, when would the "Saturday Club" have women joined. It seems that I was wrong, and it turns out that there are women among the members for a long time.

A young man came out from behind the wooden wall and stood in front of me. I knew him -- George Russell Agassius. Grandson of Mr. Agassi. I had seen him before at a Christmas party hosted by Liz when he was a kid.

I thought of a member of the Agasses family who had met me, but I didn't expect it to be such a young one, and his photography skills were very good? For a moment I couldn't believe it, I was going to learn videography from a young man? Soon, I denied my vulgar idea. Don't underestimate any of Agassi!

He has very dazzling red hair, which does not detract from his charm, but makes his eyes even more attractive.

"Hello!" I said hello, but it was a little awkward to call him Mr. Agassis, and I asked honestly, "I'm sorry, I can't remember your name?"

"My name is George, and my friends like to call me Joe!" He seemed to be a little reserved when he saw me, "Hello, do I call you Mrs. Adams, or ......"

"Even though I'm married, it seems that people like to call me Shamrock!" I said with a smile.

"Because everybody wants to get lucky!" he joked.

I laughed out loud and agreed with him. We stood in silence for a moment, then he gave me a look and said, "Please come with me." ”

Going around the wooden wall, we walked to the room inside.

The room was large, with several huge crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and non-flammable curtains on all four walls.

Inside the room there is a dark brown mahogany counter. There are two rows of shelves on the counter with countless reagent bottles containing chemicals. At intervals there were round tables covered with white curtains, and it was impossible to see what was under them.

He led me to a white curtain. He gently lifted the curtain, and my eyes began to light up, it was the giant camera obscrama of Nieps. Unraveling another piece of white cloth is a Dalgai camera, and it has been styled with an added skin cavity.

From the daguerreotype method of the Frenchman Dargay, to the Carlo method of fixing with salt water in England, and then to the wet print method...... It's like a museum of cameras and photographic techniques.

(To be continued.) )