Shen Le picked up the puppet's head and examined it closely from every angle. The crack in the back of its head was about a finger's length, and over a centimeter wide at its broadest point. As for its depth, he'd tested it while cleaning and found it went in more than three centimeters—in other words, almost halfway through the puppet's head.
"Hmm... The crack isn't that big... I just need to keep it from spreading until the head splits clean in two..."
Muttering to himself, Shen Le drew a butterfly-shaped pattern on the back of the puppet's head—or, more accurately, two trapezoids with their tops facing each other. Then he secured the back of the puppet's head, took a woodworking chisel in one hand and a hammer in the other, and pounded away. "Bang, bang, bang!"
"One, two, three, four, five. Perfect. Let's do another spot. One, two, three, four, five!"
First, he chiseled a few small holes inside the trapezoid. Then, following its edges, he cut straight down, one stroke at a time.
In less than ten minutes, a hole three centimeters long, one centimeter wide, 0.7 centimeters across at its narrowest, and two centimeters deep appeared in the back of the puppet's head. Shen Le raised his right fist and pumped it to encourage himself, then picked up a piece of miscellaneous wood he'd found in the back kitchen and started carving.
"Scritch, scritch, scritch... Scritch, scritch, scritch... Saw, saw, saw, plane, plane... Beautiful! Done!"
A wooden piece exactly matching the hole in size and shape, flat on one side and rounded on the other, dropped into Shen Le's palm. He tossed it lightly into the air.
"A dovetail tenon! It's wide at both ends and narrow in the middle. It'll catch on both sides of the crack and pull them together, keeping the crack from spreading!"
Shen Le held the freshly finished dovetail tenon against the back of the puppet's head, coated the mortise with woodworking glue, then grabbed a rubber hammer and pounded the tenon into place. The hole wasn't deep, so the tenon went in quickly, fitting snugly. Shen Le felt the raised spot on the back of the puppet's head and sighed.
"Mm. Next, I'll shave down the extra wood into a curve that follows the shape of the head... But there's no hurry. I still have other things to do..."
He found a tube of woodworking glue and squeezed it into the crack. This glue stuck to the sky, the ground, and the air in between. Woodworking Glue stuck to everything, and it was especially useful for all kinds of cracks in wooden objects, particularly fine ones.
Once the crack was filled, he picked out some wood powder in a similar color and poured it into the gap. Wood powder wasn't particularly useful for ordinary miscellaneous wood, but when repairing rosewood, you could first pour in woodworking glue, then rosewood powder, and finally sand it smooth. You could barely tell it was there; it would look like one solid piece of wood!
"Hey, I gave you the deluxe treatment! Once you come to life, you'd better repay me properly!"
Shen Le touched the puppet's head, now with the crack filled, and quickly switched to fast-drying woodworking glue to fully set the wood powder in the crack. Once it had hardened, he scraped the excess smooth with a putty knife, then let out a groan.
"Ah..."
The sanding hell was up next... Sanding, color matching, painting the wood grain, spraying lacquer, polishing—every step was painstaking and time-consuming...
Never mind. He'd wait until the sander he'd ordered arrived.
Shen Le rolled his shoulders and shook out his wrists as he headed outside to find something to eat. Before he reached the door, his phone chimed, and a WeChat message popped up from the young police officer from yesterday, Mr. Shi Guangbing:
"Are you there? Could you open the door? A few kids have gone missing. They said they ran over to this part of Old Street!"
What?
They'd run over here?
Could they have gotten into my house? Come to think of it, I don't think there's a single open door—or even a dog hole—in this place. The kids shouldn't have been able to get in, right?
As he thought it over, Shen Le hurried to open the door. When it swung open, the young police officer, Shi Guangbing, stood there looking exhausted, his eyes bloodshot. He held a tablet, and beside him stood a thirty-something auxiliary officer holding a long pole. When they saw Shen Le come to the door, they both let out a huge sigh of relief.
"The security cameras showed the three kids coming to Old Street, but we haven't been able to find them. We've searched everywhere else on Old Street, so your place is the only spot left. From last night to this morning, have you seen any of these kids or heard anything unusual?"
"No, I haven't..."
Shen Le's expression turned grave, too. He'd spent last night and this morning fussing over the puppet, and hadn't heard anything strange.
But the house had two wings, each with three courtyards, and was already huge. It wasn't quite like Rongguo Mansion, where Aunt Xue's family lived in Pear Fragrance Courtyard and Jia Zheng could go a year or six months without seeing his sister-in-law. Still, you couldn't hear just any little sound from one end to the other.
What was more, the left wing of the house had rockeries, a pond, and even a well. If one of the kids fell in, it could be disastrous!
"But I'm not sure whether the kids might've climbed in somewhere. How about this, officers—come inside with me and help look?"
He let the two officers in, locked the door, and accompanied them farther inside. As soon as they entered the courtyard, Shi Guangbing swept his gaze around and instinctively widened his eyes a little.
"Wait... You live here by yourself?"
This place was ridiculously luxurious!
He still lived with his parents, and most of his classmates at the police academy hadn't even bought their own homes yet! And this guy had a whole mansion this big?
"Yeah, I live here alone." Shen Le's smile was almost a grimace. He took a huge ring of keys from his backpack and went around with them, unlocking one room after another—the main hall, the side rooms—checking each one.
"I just inherited it. I'd graduated and had nowhere to live, so I moved in."
As a community police officer, he had to know what was going on in his district. But looking at a place on a map, a blueprint, or a satellite image was nothing like actually setting foot inside it. Shi Guangbing followed Shen Le from one room to the next, then another. First, he was surprised; then he looked like he wanted to sigh. Before long, he was worried.
"You live in a mansion this big by yourself? No tenants? Nobody to keep an eye on the place?"
It was practically begging to be robbed!
"Look at the furniture... Who could I rent it to?"
"Ah... Fair point." Shi Guangbing scratched his head. He was just a police officer, a community police officer—not a detective or a financial-crimes officer. He hadn't seen many valuable furnishings, and could only tell that they "looked like rosewood" and "seemed pretty expensive." When they'd searched the third room, he finally couldn't resist offering some advice.
"You should get someone to watch the place. No, it's too big for one person to keep an eye on. Or, if nothing else, install more cameras and alarms. If anything happens, call us—my phone number is the same as my WeChat ID. Got it?"
"Got it!"
"If anything happens, make sure you call! If you don't know how to install the cameras or connect them to the network, you can ask me later. I'll recommend someone. You have to stay safe! I don't want to come by one day only to have you report a crime—or hear someone else report that a crime happened here!"