Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 99 Murder on the Paris Express

After such a incident happened, none of the people was in the mood to go out to have such a celebration feast.

Blackett, who also lived in Magdalen College, stayed and continued to appease Ye Gongchao, while Chen Muwu and Kapiza could only leave together.

The three of them came here in high spirits, but returned in disappointment.

Back at Mrs. Brown's house, Chen Muwu lay on the bed and thought about Ye Gongchao's beating for a long time, but he couldn't think of any good solution.

……

From the second day on, Blackett began to tinker with the borrowed mass spectrometer, hoping to use the experimental results in the photo to prove that the particle he discovered was indeed a new isotope of oxygen, oxygen-17.

Chen Muwu, on the other hand, continued to look at the remaining photographic negatives of Blackett, hoping to find more proton trajectories from them, so as to provide more evidence for writing the paper.

Although Chen Muwu only looked at a few photos at the beginning, he found the trajectory of the proton and made a new and reasonable explanation for the experimental phenomenon.

From his point of view, these are trivial matters, but in Blackett's eyes, they are yet another great help Chen Muwu has given him.

Therefore, Blackett strongly demanded that Chen Muwu's name be added to the thesis. The two refused each other for a long time, and finally ended up with Chen Muwu taking over all the writing of the thesis and changing him to be the second author.

In this way, by inadvertently doing Blackett a small favor, Chen Muwu picked up another paper of sufficient weight for nothing, beautiful, beautiful!

Chen Muwu was very good at typing on the typewriter, and the papers he wrote were exquisite and neat, which was already an open secret in the Cavendish Laboratory.

His crackling typing speed is a bit faster than that of the miss typist specially hired by the laboratory.

If Chen Muwu hadn't been busy thinking about various new theories and experiments every day, maybe Miss Typist would have lost her job because everyone wanted to ask Chen Muwu to print papers for them.

At the beginning of December, Blackett finally collected enough experimental results on the mass spectrometer to prove that the helium nucleus bombarded by alpha particles did indeed generate a new atomic nucleus after radiating a proton, and this The nucleus is exactly the oxygen-17 that Chen Muwu "guessed" before.

Before mid-December, Chen Muwu combined the paper on photographic film that he had written long ago, together with the part on the mass spectrometer provided to him by Blackett a few days ago, and finally sorted out a paper signed by two and sent the completed paper to the Natural Philosophical Transactions in London.

The autumn semester has already ended, and next, it is the turn of the Christmas and New Year holidays.

Blackett and Dirac, two British natives, naturally wanted to go home for the holidays.

Both of them had sent invitations to Chen Muwu to go home with them for the festival.

And Kapitsa has no plan to go home again this time like summer, one is because this holiday is not as long as in summer, and the other is because the time of Christmas in Russia is different from that on the European continent. There was a gap of more than half a month.

Kapitsa wants to take Chen Muwu around the European continent, go to Switzerland to go skiing in the Austrian Alps, or go to France to Paris to feel the atmosphere of a romantic city.

Chen Muwu declined everyone's invitations, because he would go to London again to participate in the annual celebration of the founding of the People's Republic of China and the celebration of the New Year.

Different from the previous balls held by the Chinese Student Association in London under various pretexts, this time the sponsor was the Legation of the Republic of China in the UK, and the signatory on the invitation letter was naturally Chargé d'affaires Zhu Zhaoxin of the embassy.

Chen Muwu still didn't dare to offend the God of Wealth who controlled his official expenses, so he took the train to London as soon as he received the letter.

In winter, the smell of London becomes stronger. Chen Muwu, who just got off the train, covered his mouth and nose with a scarf, trying to minimize the smog entering his nose and mouth.

Ye Gongchao didn't need to write a thesis, so the holidays were naturally early. If he couldn't be free, he had already left Cambridge to travel around the UK.

It wasn't until they were seated in the venue that the two finally met again.

The National Day of the Republic of China was October 1912th, the day of the Tanchang Uprising, and New Year's Day in [-], when the provisional president was announced in Nanjing, became the anniversary of the founding of the country.

The invitation letter said that this day will be celebrated with New Year's Day, and by the way, I would like to pass on the news from China.

However, Zhu Zhaoxin, the charge d'affaires ad hoc who took the stage, only talked about the "glorious deeds" of the newly appointed President Cao Gong, that's all.

But these news are no longer news. Except for Chen Muwu, who hasn't read the real news in the newspaper?

To put it bluntly, this party is more like the big companies of later generations who have squeezed the employees for a whole year, and then held an annual meeting at the end of the year, giving small favors and giving blood to the social animals.

The embassy has also harvested the wool from these boys and buddies for a whole year. Of course, they also need to appease these rich leeks, so that they can grow newer and greener crops in the spring of next year.

Although Chen Muwu had tried his best to drag Ye Gongchao to hide in a corner, but because his reputation was too prominent in the past year, he was always on the loose.

Therefore, when the news that "Chen Muwu also appeared in the venue" spread, there was an endless stream of people who came to say hello with wine glasses, batch after batch.

Chen Muwu felt like a penguin in an aquarium or a panda in a foreign zoo. He felt very uncomfortable being surrounded by people.

He finally met a series of people from the Chinese Students' Union in London.

Among these people, some Chen Muwu had heard of their names, but most of them were unknown to him.

But whether he had heard of it or not, Chen Muwu didn't want to go further with them and have more interaction.

Instead, he met Jin Yuelin, the famous "love-crazed" in later generations at the venue.

After he obtained his Ph.D. from Columbia University, he sat in on political and economic affairs in London for several years. Without the funding from the Boxer Indemnity, his life was not very rich.

Ye Gongchao said that he basically relied on free food and borrowed money to survive.

But what was different from what Chen Muwu expected was that there was a beauty beside Jin Yuelin, and she was a blonde foreign girl named Taylor.

The two fought wantonly in the venue, completely ignoring the eyes of others.

He is so suave and suave now, who would have thought that he would change his appearance in the future?

Another person came with a wine glass, which made Chen Muwu remember deeply.

It's not because this person's expression is exactly the same as the one whose mouth is "Successful with a knife, worthy of a boy's head", but because the moment he opened his mouth, he wanted to invite Chen Muwu to a bitter steamed bun party.

This frightened Chen Muwu to pull Ye Gongchao and flee from the ceremony at the legation.

If you offend Zhu Zhaoxin, just offend him. At this time, saving your life is more important.

The two lived in London for another day, and went to Chinatown to purchase a lot of seasonings and New Year's goods the next day before taking the train back to Cambridge.

"Being alone in a foreign land is a stranger, and I miss my relatives during the festive season." The end of the year is approaching, and you can't treat yourself badly when you are wandering abroad. After all, you still have to have a good year.

Ye Gongchao has been a little depressed ever since he suffered a misfortune in the alley that day. Although he had a relaxing time during the winter vacation, it was nothing more than nothing.

This is the most serious blow he has suffered because of racial discrimination during his years of studying in Europe and America, both mentally and physically.

Even now, with two well-dressed people sitting in a first-class train compartment, the invisible discrimination still exists.

Sitting in the jolting train with tinkling bells, feeling the very oppressive low pressure in the carriage, Chen Muwu suddenly thought of a way that might enlighten the little brother beside him.

So he nudged Ye Gongchao beside him with his elbow: "Let me tell you, Lao Ye, after you came to England, have you read any of their detective novels?"

"Of course I have read it. When I was in the United States, I read Sir Conan Doyle's "Study in Scarlet" and "The Sign of Four". After I came to England, I even read them in the library of Magdalen College. Read all the Sherlock Holmes books."

"Then have you ever thought about writing a detective novel yourself? You see in the carriage, everyone has books and newspapers and magazines in their hands to pass the time. I bet most of them read Detective novels. I figured if I could write a bestseller, I'd make a lot of money."

Since Sherlock Holmes became popular in the UK, mystery novels have entered a golden age. Detective and case-solving can be regarded as the best-selling subject in Britain at present. Chen Muwu's words are true.

"I start writing? Brother Hanchen, to tell you the truth, although I have a background in literature, I really don't have such a bright brain. Not to mention that I can study physics like you, it is a detective novel with careful thinking. I can’t even write it, little brother.”

Ye Gongchao rejected Chen Muwu's proposal.

"I do have such an idea. If there is such a train from Moscow to Paris, when it arrives at the street of Berlin in the middle of the night, a rich man who sleeps in the first-class compartment is suddenly found with twelve knives in his body. , died tragically in the box.

"The suspects in the carriage include a lady from Russia, an officer stationed in India, an ambassador from Hungary, and a salesman from the United States...

"And these people are no more, no less, just a total of twelve people.

"...

"You said, what will happen after this?"

The bumpy train inspired Chen Muwu. Basically, he briefly explained the outline of the book "Murder on the Orient Express" to Ye Gongchao.

The story he told really aroused Ye Gongchao's interest.

"And then, then?" He asked impatiently.

After that, there was Chen Muwu's wild nonsense. He changed the identity of the great detective Poirot to a Chinese student studying in Britain who arrived in Moscow from Harbin by the Trans-Siberian Railway. He also happened to take this train to Paris. Then transfer to the UK to study.

The Chinese student witnessed the whole incident and finally cracked the case of the murder of the rich man.

Ye Gongchao couldn't help but praised: "This is really a wonderful story, Brother Hanchen, you really should write this story down, and you will definitely earn a lot of money in England!"

Chen Muwu shook his head: "With my level of English, it's not a problem to write a few physics papers, but let me write novels, so I don't want to make a fool of myself. Gongchao, if you are interested, you can write the papers I just wrote. The story I told was expanded into a novel, and I found a publishing house to try my luck. As for the name of this Chinese student, how about taking half of our names and calling him George Chen? This name Although it is half Chinese and half Western, it not only retains the characteristics of the Chinese, but also makes it easier for the British to accept.”

"That's an interesting idea. Brother Hanchen, I've accepted this job. If I can get the royalties in the end, then the two of us will get [-]/[-], and you [-]/[-], how about it?"

"Hey, I come up with ideas and you come up with pens. It should be [-]-[-]."

"Absolutely not. Either I won't take a penny, and I won't touch the pen; or I will pay seven to three points. Brothers have to settle accounts clearly. If you agree, I will take out a pen and paper to make a written statement."

Seeing Ye Gongchao's persistence, Chen Muwu had no choice but to accept such a large amount of royalties with tears in his eyes.

Unlike "Shooting the Condors", which he wrote in China with 100 million words and earned only 1 yuan, the royalties in Europe and the United States were very high at this time.

In 1920, Fitzgerald, who later wrote The Great Gatsby, published his first novel, Heaven on Earth.

With this 3000-word book alone, he made a lot of money, and the royalty income for that year was as high as more than [-] U.S. dollars.

And in the 30s and [-]s, the golden age of mystery novels, publishing a best-selling detective novel could only earn a lot more royalties than Fitzgerald.

Once this book "Murder on the Paris Express" is published, the royalties should be able to support Chen Muwu to complete his electron diffraction experiment.

I just hope that after the specific amount of royalties comes out, Ye Gongchao will not cry out because of the seven-thirds of the accounts that he has always insisted on and written in black and white on paper.

The reason why he did not choose to write by himself, but to provide ideas and ask Ye Gongchao to do it for him, is because there are more physics experiments waiting for Chen Muwu to do, and there are more stars and oceans waiting for him to explore.

Of course, Chen Muwu asked Ye Gongchao to write this book not only for making quick money, but also for other reasons.

Just a few Fu Manchu novels by Yan Heigou can fool the European and American people into panic about the Chinese, and even college students with high IQs in Cambridge University can be encouraged to punch Ye Gongchao who is walking on the road.

This shows how popular detective novels are now in Britain since Sherlock Holmes.

Detective novels will dominate the British and American bestsellers for nearly 20 years in the future. It was not until after World War II that they gradually turned to the tough guys.

If a talented Chinese detective George Chen is successfully created during this period, it may subtly influence the views of a generation of Europeans and Americans towards Chinese people.

The character of George Chen can also be turned into a powerful IP to export culture to the outside world.

That's why Chen Muwu chose the story of "Paris Express" to let a Chinese student who came from the far east come on the stage by train.

After that, there is "Tragedy on the Nile", what is a narrative trick, and which is Blizzard Mountain Villa, all of which can be placed on George Chen.

Agatha Christie, Ellery Quinn, and Dixon Carr, the three masters of the golden age, will no longer appear. In the future, when George Chen is mentioned, he will be dubbed "the greatest figure in the history of mystery novels since Sherlock Holmes." "Name.

The classic mystery novels stored in Chen Muwu's brain are inexhaustible, and he can completely let Ye Gongchao turn Chen Qiaozhi into a romantic and adventurous James Bond-style character.

As for the nationalities of the villains in the book, in order to cater to the mainstream, they can be Germans who are looked down upon by the whole of Europe.

After this period of time, slowly transfer to the kid.

In this way, it not only improves the image of the Chinese in the eyes of Europeans and Americans, but also lowers their perception of themselves.

When the movie adapted from the novel is released on the big screen in the future, this influence will spread more widely.

Maybe, when bombing Tokyo in the future, some pilots will even draw George Chen's head on the fuselage of the plane.

American aid to China may therefore be more generous than in history.

But whether you are generous or not here basically has no effect, because most of the aid will flow into Mrs. Chang's bank account in the United States.

It's just that those Americans who will be imprisoned in concentration camps by the Americans in the future will definitely be treated worse than in history.

(End of this chapter)