Like an aircraft that has been boosted by a rocket take-off, Gregory’s brain leapt from ticking over to hurtling speed. Lin Wân had cheated Kâo. But why? Had Tû-lai known? Probably he had. If so, as he was a decent fellow that would account for his reluctance to talk about or have anything to do with the fake Josephine: Who was she? Anyhow he ought to have realised days ago that she was a fake.
That she had habitually used French with her mother was plausible, but not that she did not understand English. In spite of the retired life she led, having been brought up in the United States the real Josphine must at least have known enough to give orders to the daily woman. This girl had pulled the wool over his eyes by making him assume that she used French only because she found it easier.
And her lack of education! He must have softening of the brain not to have smelt a rat about her. The Chinese set great store by learning, and those who had settled in America no longer considered it to be necessary only in men. Even in straitened circumstances a girl of good class, like Josephine, would certainly have been taught history and geography, given good books to read and listened intelligently to talks on the radio. No wonder this girl was reluctant to give her ideas of life in San Francisco; the odds were that she had never been there. Her appearance, too, should have been a give-away. Believing her to be twenty they had accepted her as that, but any unprejudiced observer would have put her down as twenty-four or twenty-five.
Angry at the way they had allowed themselves to be tricked, and himself—as he had had better opportunities of finding her out—to an even more humiliating extent than the others, he snapped:
‘What’s the meaning of this?’
Ignoring his question, she continued to cling to his knees and implore him to save her.
‘Save you from what?’ he asked impatiently.
‘From them! Oh, take me away from here! Take me away!’
Her last words rose to a high-pitched note.
‘For God’s sake keep your voice down!’ he whispered, fearing that it might arouse A-lu-te or Kâo and that one of them would come in to see what was the matter. Then, pushing the girl away from him; he told her to get back into bed.
Instead of obeying she remained squatting on her heels staring up at him, her big eyes limpid with unshed tears and her bare arms held out appealingly. ‘Please!’ she whimpered. ‘Have mercy! Only you can save me!’
‘Speak lower!’ he urged her. ‘Save you from what?’
‘They mean to kill me.’
‘Who?’
‘Chou, and the rest of the old Lord’s retainers.’
‘Why should you think that?’
‘The young Lord, Tû-lai, told me so.’
‘What have Chou and the others against you?’
‘Nothing. It must be that they have been ordered to get the money back.’
‘What money?’
‘The money I was paid to impersonate the Princess.’
‘Tû-lai knew about this, then?’
‘Yes. But he must have thought it wrong that the old Lord should go back on his bargain. Before he left us he warned me, and urged me to escape at the first opportunity. But alone, how can I? I should——’
Gregory cut her short with a gesture. ‘Before we go into that, let’s try to get things straight. First of all, who are you?’
‘I am Shih-niang, a singing girl of Canton,’ she gabbled out. ‘The old Lord bought me two years ago. My mother was half French. Girls like myself are given only one form of education. That is why I can barely write the simplest Chinese characters. It was my being able to speak French that gave the old Lord the idea that I could carry out this imposture. At first I refused. The thought of having to act as though I was dumb for the rest of my life seemed terrible. He dangled the temptation of becoming an Empress before me. He said that no one would suspect me if I made increasing noises until I could pretend that my voice was coming back. But I was frightened—frightened that I should be found out by the people of the island, and that they would kill me. As I still refused, he offered me ten thousand American dollars to play the part for three weeks. He said that would be long enough for his purpose. Then when we got near the coast I could run away. With my freedom and ten thousand dollars I could have made a fine marriage. So … so then I agreed.’
Breaking off, she jumped up, ran to her bed and drew from beneath the pillow a small silk satchel. Hastily pulling back its flap she showed it to Gregory. It was crammed with fifty and hundred dollar bills. Holding it out to him she cried:
‘See! Here is the money! Take it, but get me away. All my life I have been protected. Nearer the coast I could have managed somehow. I’d have slipped away at dawn and got on a train. But here, and at night, I dare not go alone. I should be robbed and sold into a brothel long before I reached Canton.’
He shook his head. ‘No. I don’t want your money.’
‘Please!’ she implored him. ‘To whom can I turn? The Lord Kâo and Lady A-lu-te would be furious if I confessed my imposture to them. For a girl like me they would care nothing. They would have me thrown out naked into the street. But you are just a man of their household, and so quite different. This money is a fortune. On it we could run away and live together happily for years. You must take me! You must! How can you be so heartless as to refuse?’
Again she had raised her voice and Gregory endeavoured to cut her short with a swift, ‘Hush! Stop talking, and let me think a minute.’
Misinterpreting his meaning, she hurried on, but in a lower tone, ‘I will be obedient and make you happy. I swear I will! I was well taught, and my limbs are strong and supple. I know the seventy caresses, and have practised the forty-one ways of attaining complete enjoyment. I can sing French songs, as well as Chinese; and at the Feast of Lanterns I will hire five other girls to assist me in making for you the wheel of love.’
Suddenly she threw the satchel containing the money on the bed behind her, raised her two hands to the low-necked frill of her night-dress, and ripped it down the centre. It slid to the floor. Standing naked before him, she cried:
‘Look! Am I not beautiful? Men have paid sums which would keep their families for a month to spend a single night in my company. But I am yours for as long as you wish, if only you will save me.’
Without shoes she stood about five feet high, so was moderately tall. She had a graceful neck set on broad shoulders and her hips too were broad, but neither gave an impression of heaviness, owing to their good proportions and her long shapely legs. Her breasts were full, round and firm; her skin had the texture of satin, and her lovely golden body had not a single blemish on it. Gregory could well believe that she had paid high dividends to the Canton tea-house from which Lin Wân had bought her.
‘Listen,’ he said. But he got no further. A sound came of the door to the balcony being opened. He saw Shih-niang’s eyes open wide, then dilate with terror. The thought flashed into his mind that it must be Lin Wân’s men come to rob and kill her. Instinctly, fearing to be knocked on the head from behind, he ducked. As he did so a knife streaked over his shoulder. It caught Shih-niang in the side of the neck. She gave a high-pitched screech that ended in a groan and fell back on the bed.
As Gregory swung round, the door was already being pulled to. He caught only a glimpse of a fluttering robe that might have belonged to anyone; then it slammed shut. For a second he hesitated whether to give chase or go to the assistance of the stricken girl. The thought that, as she had been pierced in the neck; her life might hang on a matter of minutes decided him.
Running to the bed, he bent over her. Blood had gushed from the wound. Her head lay in a pool of it, and it was dripping down on to the floor. One glance was enough. Nothing could be done for her. The blade had severed her jugular vein. She was already unconscious, and no attempt to staunch the bleeding could now prevent her death.
Gregory’s glance fell on the satchel she had flung down before tearing off her night-dress. Chou and his men could not have forgotten it, as it was for it that one of them had killed her. It looked as if on finding Gregory in her room they had lost their heads. Their leader must have had his knife ready, so thrown it, then panicked. But there were five of them, and they might come back for the money at any moment. Meaning to run from the room and raise an alarm, Gregory grabbed it up, so that they should not get it if they returned while he was absent. As he did so, some of the notes fell out on to the floor. His back was still turned to the door as he heard it open a second time. Swivelling round he saw that A-lu-te stood framed in the darkness of the doorway.
He was between the candle and the top half of the bed, so the deep band of shadow he threw hid Shih-niang’s head and bloody throat. From where A-lu-te was standing she could see clearly only Shih-niang’s dangling legs, the lower half of her naked body, and that it was Gregory who had been bending over her.
‘So it is you!’ she exclaimed, her voice vibrant with fury. ‘From your recent conduct, when I heard someone talking in here I thought it must be. At least you might have had the decency to refrain from an attempt upon her in a place where I could hear you.’
Making an impatient gesture, Gregory was just about to cut her short, when a horrible gurgling came from behind him. It was Shih-niang’s death rattle. It was the sort of noise that a dumb girl might have made during such a scene; so although she had made no attempt to sit up and pull the bed-clothes over herself, A-lu-te assumed her to be fully conscious. Her golden eyes darkening with anger, she continued to storm at Gregory:
‘Are you not ashamed! As for her, from the first she has shown more the characteristics of a gutter-wench than of a Princess. After this betrayal of what she owes to her position, I would rather die than serve her. And what will Kâo have to say about this pretty plot of yours to establish yourself as our future Empress’s lover? You have——’
‘For God’s sake shut up!’ Gregory broke in, at last checking her tirade. ‘The girl is dead!’
As he spoke he took a pace forward. At the same moment a bulkier form appeared in the doorway behind A-lu-te’s. It was Kâo, and now that the candle-light shone upon Shih-niang’s gaping mouth and staring eyes, he took the whole scene in at a glance. Evidently he had caught A-lu-te’s last words, for, pushing her aside, he thrust out an accusing hand at Gregory, and cried:
‘Not her lover, her murderer!’
Since Shih-niang’s scream as the knife pierced her throat, barely two minutes had elapsed. A-lu-te had been first on the scene as she had already been awakened by Shih-niang’s desperate pleading; but the cry had roused a number of other people who had rooms opening on to the long balcony. Kâo had hardly arrived when several other men came crowding up behind him, demanding to know what was happening.
Gregory still clutched the satchel bulging with notes. Kâo’s arm dropped, pointing at the notes scattered on the floor, and he shouted:
‘He has killed her! He killed her for her money! We must seize him!’
Instantly Gregory saw that he was in as desperate a situation as could possibly be imagined. Shih-niang was dead. There was no one who could confirm the fact that she had been attempting to bribe him to run away with her; no proof that she believed Lin Wân’s men to be plotting her death. He had even destroyed her message asking him to come to her room. There was no reason he could offer for being there. If he allowed himself to be seized, no amount of swearing to the truth on his part would be accepted as proof of his innocence. There was only one thing to do. He must fight his way out and make a bolt for it.
That swift decision taken, he stepped back towards the main door of the room, which led out into a corridor. Thrusting a hand behind him he found the door knob. It turned but would not give. Assuming that he would come to her by way of the balcony, Shih-niang must have shot the bolt of the door to the passage. He dared not take his eyes from the hostile faces now glaring at him from less than two yards distance. With frantically fumbling fingers he found the bolt, but was given no chance to draw it back. As his fingers closed round it, one of the men from a neighbouring room launched himself upon him.
With a kick that would have done credit to a ballet dancer, Gregory landed the toe of his right shoe under the man’s chin. He was brought up short, his head snapped back, and he dropped to the floor like a sack of coals. While the man was still falling Gregory sprang past him. His chance of getting the door behind him open had gone, and he knew that his only hope now lay in seizing the initiative. Slamming his right fist into one man’s face, he hit another with his left a glancing blow on the ear. The first went down with a howl, the second reeled away, but had already drawn his knife and came at him again from the side. Swerving, he seized his attacker’s wrist, threw himself flat against him and kneed him in the groin. The poor wretch gave a scream of agony, dropped his knife and doubled up.
Terrified at the sight of the havoc wrought by this human tornado in a few seconds, two less courageous visitors flattened themselves against the wall of the narrow room. Except for Kâo, whose portly form still blocked the door, the way was now clear. This was no time to argue, so Gregory gave him a swift jab in his fat stomach, thrust him aside, and ran out on to the balcony.
A-lu-te had stepped back there after Kâo had pushed past her into the room. But she had seen, as he had, the awful spectacle of Shih-niang, a dark streak of blood across her throat beneath her thrown-back chin, making her appear as though she had been decapitated. At the sight A-lu-te had screamed with horror, and on seeing Gregory dash through the doorway she screamed again.
But no further outcry was needed to rouse the caravanserai. Shouts, cries and the sound of running feet were coming from both inside and outside it. Shadowy figures were running towards Gregory from the far end of the balcony. For a second he thought of scrambling over it and jumping down into the garden; but it was a twelve foot drop. The risk of a broken ankle was too great. With such a handicap he would never get away. Only one line of possible escape was left open. There was no one on the short length of balcony outside A-lu-te’s room; and beyond it was the corner of the building.
Kâo, half doubled up, with his hands pressed to his paunch, was groaning in the doorway of Shih-niang’s room. Before Gregory had time to move, someone pushed past Kâo and darted at him. As the man ran out, Gregory side stepped, then, holding his open hand rigid, brought the side of it down like an executioner’s axe on the back of the man’s neck. The force of the blow, added to his own impetus, sent him crashing into the rustic railing of the balcony. It gave way under his weight. With a terrified cry, he hurtled head foremost into the garden.
The group of men running along the balcony were already within twenty feet. Swerving away, he raced past A-lu-te’s room. At the corner of the building he cast a glance over his shoulder to assess his chances. With a gasp of surprise and thankfulness he saw that A-lu-te had thrown herself in front of his pursuers, in an attempt to bar their advance. He knew that the respite she had gained him could be only momentary, but even the grant of time to draw breath was incredibly welcome.
There was no one on the balcony along the side of the building, but he saw that thirty feet from the corner further advance along it was blocked by a solid wooden partition. Again, it seemed that his only hope lay in risking a drop to the ground.
Then a new thought sprang to his mind. In Europe the long range of rooms at the back of the inn would have been regarded as attics. Like a series of peaks and valleys each had its separate roof with a ridge sloping down to gutters. Inside, at their apex, the rooms were not more than eight feet high and their side walls were barely six. The corresponding slopes outside were little more than the thickness of the tiles higher. The gutter of the end roof near which he stood actually came down to a level with the top of his head.
Grasping the gutter with both hands, and praying that it would not break under his weight, he heaved himself up. After a frantic struggle he succeeded in getting one knee on it, then the other. Clutching at the sloping tiles he hoisted himself on to them, and swiftly spread himself like a starfish, to lessen the risk of any separate tile clattering down through the pull his wriggling exerted upon it.
To his immense relief they held, but he was still supporting himself by his toes in the gutter, and he felt that he dared not try to climb higher for the moment, in case his full weight brought both the ancient tiles and himself slithering down on to the balcony like an avalanche.
It was an extremely precarious position, but he knew that he must now gamble on the fact that when making an excited search for anyone, people rarely look upward. Flattened against the tiles as he was, if he remained quite still there was a good chance that his pursuers, finding this dead-end of the balcony empty, would assume that he must have jumped down into the garden.
With a heavy trampling of feet they came pounding round the corner, and slowed to a halt just beneath him. As far as he could judge from their voices there were about six of them. Holding his breath, he waited. Panting from their exertions they gasped exclamations to one another.
‘He’s got away!’ ‘He must have jumped over!’ ‘There’s no one there!’ ‘He couldn’t have without breaking a leg.’ ‘Where else can he have gone?’ ‘He may have crawled into the patch of shadow beneath us.’ ‘Quick! Let’s get down stairs and see!’
With the mentality of the herd they turned and ran back the way they had come. The sound of their pounding feet died away in the distance. Gregory drew in a deep breath. He was safe for the next few minutes, and must make the best possible use of them.
To have dropped down on to the balcony again would have been the height of rashness. An excited clamour was still coming from the long stretch of it; so any second another batch of men might come round the corner. On the other hand he feared that if he remained where he was much longer the ancient gutter which was bearing most of his weight would give way. To be safe on the roof for any length of time he knew that he ought to get into one of the valleys between its gables. The nearest lay between Shih-niang’s room and A-lu-te’s, and as he was lying on the outer slope of the latter, to reach it meant climbing over the ridge that cut the sky-line about six feet ahead of him.
That sky-line was the trouble. Even if the tiles held as he clambered up to the ridge, anyone glancing up from below could not have failed to spot him, in the starlight, as he crossed it. He decided that the risk was too great. But there was another possibility that might give him slightly better cover than he had at the moment, and enable him to take the strain off the gutter. Like most Chinese buildings that are over a hundred years old, the roof came down at each corner in a graceful saddle that terminated in an upturned sabre tooth. By working his way along to within a few feet of this curved corner ridge, he could lie in the bend it made and gain concealment on one side from its ornamentation.
It lay only about ten feet off to his right. Gingerly he eased himself towards it until the slope lessened and he no longer had to cling on to the tiles. For a few minutes he rested there, thinking only of the narrowness of his escape and wondering if his luck would hold; then he began anxiously to consider his next move.
For the time being he could not do better than remain where he was, but as soon as the tumult had died down he must take advantage of the remaining hours of darkness to get well away from the inn; otherwise the odds would once again be all on his being caught, and he had no illusions about what would happen then. Life in China had always been cheap. The Chinese had never developed the system of defence by solicitors and barristers, or the technicalities of legal procedure that often delay trials in the civilisation of the West. He would be hauled before a magistrate, condemned to death for Shih-niang’s murder and summarily executed.
Yet, somehow, before he made his attempt to get away, he felt that he must try to see A-lu-te. To her he owed even his temporary safety; for, had not she thrown herself in front of his pursuers and gained him a few moments’ grace, he would already have been captured. To her, too, he owed the recovery of a balanced mind and the fact that he was now able to take pleasure again in the normal joys of living. As the result of their intimacy during the past six months she had filled an unforgettable place in his life, and this ghastly business that had occurred barely ten minutes ago meant that, after tonight, it was most unlikely that he would ever see her again.
He did not think she would accept the idea that he had murdered Shih-niang for her money, but would more probably decide that he had made an attempt upon the girl and, finding her unwilling, had threatened her with the knife; with the result that, owing to her continued resistance, she had been wounded in the ensuing struggle. It was at least probable that A-lu-te was thinking on some such lines. Anyway, in view of all that they had been to one another, he did not wish her memory of him to be embittered by the belief that he was really such an unscrupulous blackguard as to try to force a dumb girl, or that he had even contemplated being unfaithful to her.
Besides, she and Kâo had come ten thousand miles in their search for the Princess; so he owed it to them to let them know that the dead girl had been a fake, and that not only had Lin Wân cheated them, but that it was his men who had murdered her.
At that, it struck him that had several men been involved he must surely have heard, if not their approach, at least the noise they made in their hasty retreat. From the second Shih-niang had reeled away with the knife in her throat, he had given only one swift thought to her attacker, then run to her aid; but now he had an opportunity to go over the event again, he felt certain that no sounds of confusion, such as a little crowd would have made, had reached him after the door was shut.
Again, as A-lu-te left her room she might have failed to notice one dark figure moving away at the far end of the balcony, but a group could not have escaped her attention; and, as it was the middle of the night would have suggested to her that something unusual was afoot. Yet obviously, on entering Shih-niang’s room, no thought of possible robbery or violence had been in her mind. She had assumed that while everyone was sleeping he had been making love to Josephine. It looked then as if either Chou, or one of his men, alone had undertaken the job of closing Shih-niang’s mouth for good and getting Lin Wân’s money back.
Another thought followed: Lin Wân was immensely rich. Whatever his object, he had succeeded in tricking them, but only because Shih-niang had agreed to help him; so why rob the poor girl afterwards? Ten thousand dollars was a big sum to her but could mean little to a great merchant prince. It was difficult to believe that anyone in his position would be capable of such meanness.
Gregory then recalled that when he had been questioning Shih-niang about why anyone should want to kill her, she had said ‘It must be that they have been ordered to get the money back.’ That meant she had only been guessing. Perhaps, then, she had no certain knowledge at all about the threat that overhung her.
When Tû-lai had parted from them he had stepped aside with her only for a moment, so could have had time to whisper no more than a single sentence. Could he have simply said ‘There is a plot to kill you; escape at the first opportunity’? If so, had she jumped to the conclusion that he was referring to his father’s man, whereas the threat to her that he had in mind came from quite a different quarter? For that there was some support in the probability that only one person had crept up, outside her room, as, if it had been Chou, he would surely have brought at least one companion to keep watch while he did the deed.
Yet who else could have desired her death? Could A-lu-te have knifed her out of jealousy? That would not have been beyond the bounds of possibility if she had caught her lover in the act of betraying her. But such crimes are not premeditated, and this one had been; otherwise how could Tû-lai have warned Shih-niang of her danger? No, the idea was fantastic. And, apart from jealousy, neither A-lu-te nor Kâo could possibly have had any motive for making away with the woman they believed to be the Princess. Therefore it could not have been of them that Tû-lai was thinking.
One other possibility occurred to Gregory. Could Tû-lai have been referring to the Communists? He had told them that there were Communist spies among the scores of people who inhabited Lin Wân’s great house. Had they discovered that the Princess was living there, but had had no means of identifying her until they got wind of the fact that Kâo had come to fetch her away? If so, and Lin Wân had counter-spies who informed him what the Communists found out, he might have learned that they meant to murder Josephine as soon as they could after she had left his protection. That would account for his having substituted Shih-niang for her. As Shih-niang had placed it beyond dispute that Tû-lai was aware of the substitution, it was fair to suppose that he also knew the reason for it, and that would account for the compassionate warning he had given her.
At last Gregory felt that he had a really plausible theory. Yet he was far from content with it. The whole thing rested on a Communist agent having followed them from the House of Lin. If one had, and the People’s Republic wished to eliminate the Princess, why had they not simply arrested the woman they believed to be her soon after she arrived in Tung-kwan? Why take the unorthodox and pointless step of having her murdered?
Again, while Lin Wân might have been justified in pulling a fast one over the Communists, that could hardly apply to his old friend Kâo. Surely he would have told Kâo what he feared. Then, perhaps, they might have planned the substitution to draw the Communists’ fire, while arranging for the real Josephine to be sent by another route so that, in due course, she could join Kâo in Su-chow or somewhere near the coast.
But that had not been the way of things. Otherwise Kâo would have been expecting Shih-niang to be murdered and known who her murderers were; in which case he would not have accused Gregory of murdering her for her money.
The sound of voices was still coming from beyond the corner ridge beside which Gregory lay, and he knew that he might pay for it with his life if he made another move before things had finally settled down. All he could do at present was to cling there and, by continuing to puzzle over Shih-niang’s death, try to keep his mind off the extremely unpleasant death he would suffer himself if he were caught.