During the Jiaqing period, there was a police officer in Hukou County, Jiangxi Province, named Cao Fu, who was very good at catching thieves. He observed people's movements and was often able to find flaws that were difficult for ordinary people to find.

One summer, he had nothing to do, sitting under the big willow tree at the entrance of the county yamen enjoying the shade, next to many people playing chess together.

Cao Fu saw a man in his thirties, wearing a silk cloth shirt, a short-sleeved tweed vest, wearing silk shoes and white socks on his feet, holding a folding fan in his hand, walking slowly over, looking very elegant.

Cao Fu suddenly stepped forward to stop him. The man was very frightened and quickly took out the money to give it to him. He ran away, and Cao Fu didn't get up to chase after him.

Asked how he knew the person was not a good person, Cao Fu said: "When that person walks, he always lowers his head and often looks around with his eyes slanted. I knew there must be a ghost in his heart."

Asked why he didn't chase after him, Cao Fu smiled and said: "If it was a thief who often steals things, he would not be so nervous and careful. From what I see, he is just acting in a hurry. As long as he can hand over the stolen money, there is no need to investigate his fault." Everyone admired Cao Fu's eyesight and analysis, and nodded in praise.

Once again, Cao Fu was walking by the river when suddenly he jumped on a small boat. There was no one on the boat, so Cao Fu sat on the boat for a while. After the boatman got on the boat, he urged Cao Fu to go ashore, and Cao Fu said he was willing to go with the boatman.

The boatman was very surprised and asked Cao Fu why. Cao Fuliang showed the waist card of the catcher and shouted sharply: "You have stolen goods on this boat, I want to search for it."

The boatman was very angry, so he opened the cabin board to show him, but there was nothing under the cabin board. Seeing Cao Fu's face was a little surprised, the boatman said arrogantly: "You falsely accuse others and slander good people, what should I do?"

Cao Fu glanced at the boatman with his wise eyes, then looked at the cabin, and said firmly, "Open the baseplate."

This time the boatman refused to live or die, so Cao Fu forcibly opened it with the wooden staff he brought with him, and he saw that the bottom of the cabin was full of gold and silver cloth. It turned out that the layer below the base plate was specially used to hide stolen goods.

Seeing that the situation was not good, the boatman collapsed on the boat and kowtowed Cao Fu to beg for mercy. Therefore, Cao Fu tied the boatman up with a rope. After the boat docked, he brought people to collect the stolen goods and escorted the boatman to the county yamen.

Once examined, it turned out that the boatman was a long-time thief and a cunning thief. Other police officers in the county yamen asked Cao Fu how they knew there were stolen goods in the boat.

"I saw that the boat was small, but the wind and waves couldn't shake it, and the cables that tied the boat were heavy, so I knew there must be heavy cargo on the boat," Mr. Cao said. "But the plywood was empty, which meant that there was probably something wrong with what was hidden under the plywood. If I use the method of inquiry, I will expose the true face of the thief."

Another timeCao Fu went to Nanchang to visit his uncle. In the evening, he came to a hotel and lived in a large house with everyone. Among them was a merchant who sold porcelain, and several boxes of ceramic utensils were piled on the ground. Upon entering the hotel, Cao Fu saw that two merchants were living in the next room first, and a lot of cloth was piled up at the door. Soon eight people carried a large cabinet and went in, staying with the two cloth merchants. Cao Fu slept on the bed next to the wall.

In the middle of the night, when it was very cold, Cao Fu woke up and turned around. Just as he was about to sleep comfortably again, he suddenly felt something move in the next room. He got out of bed gently, pressed his ear against the partition wall, and listened carefully. A voice cried, "Take all my things, just raise your hand and give me some money so I can pay for the journey home."

Cao Fu was startled and knew that there was an abnormal situation next door, so he listened carefully with bated breath. He heard the murmur next door, and at this time, it seemed that someone had agreed to the person's request just now. But suddenly another vicious voice said, "If we don't kill him, we will definitely leave problems behind, and the harm will be endless."

After a while, silence returned to the next room. Cao Fu thought he must have run into a robber, and after thinking for a while, he deliberately kicked over a box of porcelain, waking everyone in the room. When the merchant who sold the porcelain saw that his porcelain was damaged, he scolded Cao Fu and prepared to take action. Cao Fu also deliberately quarreled with the porcelain merchant, and the people living in the same room rose up to persuade him.

The noise spread throughout the hotel, and the owner and his staff got up to ask what had happened. In the midst of the hustle and bustle, Cao Fu took the opportunity to pull the owner over and tell him what had happened next door. The owner was a brave man, and he patted his chest to assure the porcelain merchant that the next day, Cao Fu would compensate for the loss. Cao Fu asked the owner to prepare secretly.

The next day, at dawn, the group of people in the next room came out with a large cabinet and were about to leave the hotel. The owner saw that there were still ten people, but he greeted them quietly and asked deliberately, "Oh, why are there two people missing?" The ten people replied together: "We were ten people when we stayed in the store, and ten people when we left the store. Is there any problem?"

The shopkeeper winked, and the crowd swarmed up and began to search the men's luggage and large wooden cases. When the people opened the wooden cabinets, they all screamed in surprise. It turned out that there were two bloody corpses inside, which were actually the two cloth merchants. Everyone was very angry and escorted them to the official palace.

During the interrogation, the ten men flatly denied their crimes, and did not confess the truth until they were given torture tools. The gang often roamed the nearby area to commit crimes, and in recent days they learned that cloth merchants had a lot of money on them. In order to commit murder, they followed the cloth merchants for several days and came up with this deception, which was to hide two accomplices in the large cabinet and carry them into the inn. After killing the people, they replaced the living people with dead bodies and carried them out together.

Their intentions could be said to be meticulous. They did not expect Cao Fu to wake up in the middle of the night and hear the fabric merchant begging for mercy. As the saying goes, "The sky net is magnificent, but it is not leak."