Meanwhile, beside the stage.
Inspector Yassa had no time to reflect on how close he had come to banging his head. He scrambled onto the stage on all fours, saw the blood dripping steadily from beneath the steel spike bed, and could not help letting out a distinctly ungentlemanly curse.
Then he strode toward the steel plate bed. "Hurry up and let him down!"
"You..." The two beautiful female assistants looked at him, then at Jiang Xia behind him, at a loss.
"Untie that cloth, raise the knife bed, immediately!" Inspector Yassa glanced at the enormous steel nail bed. He felt certain the person on it was already thoroughly dead. But they still had to follow procedure—if they left him pressed beneath that steel plate, he would only become even more dead.
After hesitating for a moment, the assistants opened the cloth surrounding the steel spike bed.
Inspector Yassa frowned and looked over.
Yet unlike the "Steel Plate Human Sandwich" he had imagined, the Magician had not been caught between two steel plates at all. He was lying atop them, completely unharmed.
Seeing someone rush onto the stage, he turned over and elegantly sat up, revealing a forgiving smile. "Oh my, it seems a little Detective was so captivated by my thrilling performance that he thought I... Uh, you are...?"
The Magician froze when he saw the furious Inspector Yassa.
Jiang Xia had solved three cases in a row as soon as he arrived in London and had even made the newspaper, attracting some attention. This time, aside from using him to lure out Kinoshita Yoko, the Magician had intended for Jiang Xia to rush onto the stage after seeing the Help Signal, heightening the show's effect.
—His magic was so realistic that even a professional Detective could not see