The Chinese Gold Murders

SIXTH CHAPTER

LOOKING at the neatly-dressed, sedate people who were crowding round the marble-topped tables, the two friends reflected that this restaurant was far above their financial status. "Let's go somewhere else," Ma Joong muttered.

As he turned round to go, a thin man who was sitting alone at a table near the door rose from his chair. He said in a thick voice, "Sit down and join me, my friends! Drinking alone always saddens me.

He looked at them with watery eyes from under queerly shaped, arched eyebrows that gave him a perpetual questioning look. They noticed that he wore a dark blue robe of costly silk, and a high cap of black velvet. But there were stains on his collar, and untidy locks of hair came out from under his cap. He had a bloated face, and a thin, long nose with a shining red tip.

"Since he asks for it, let's keep him company a bit," Cbiao Tai said. "I wouldn't like that yokel downstairs to think that we had been kicked out!"

The two friends sat down opposite their host, who immediately ordered two large jugs of wine.

"What might you be doing for a living?" Ma Joong asked when the waiter had gone.

"I am Po Kai, the business manager of the shipowner Yee Pen," the thin man replied. He emptied his cup in one draught, then added proudly, "But I am also a well-known poet."

"Since you pay for the drinks, we won't hold that against you," Ma Joong said generously. He lifted the wine jug, threw his head back and slowly let half of its contents pour down his throat. Chiao Tai followed his example. Po Kai watched this performance eagerly.

"Neat!" he said with approval. "In this particular establishment one as a rule uses a cup, but I think your method is of refreshing simplicity."

"It just so happens that we are in need of a long drink," Ma Joong said as he wiped his mouth with a sigh of satisfaction.

Po Kai refilled his own cup, then said, "Tell me a good story! You fellows who live by the road must lead an eventful life." "Live by the road?" Ma Joong exclaimed indignantly. "Look here, my man, you'd better mind your language. We are officers of the tribunal!"

Po Kai lifted his arched eyebrows still higher. He shouted at the waiter, "Bring another wine jug, the largest!" Then he went on. "Well well, so you two are the men the new magistrate imported here today. But he must have recruited you only recently, for you haven't yet got that smug look of petty officials."

"Did you know the former magistrate?" Chiao Tai asked. "They say he also was some sort of poet."

"Hardly," Po Kai replied. "I am rather new here, you know." He suddenly put down his cup and exclaimed happily, "That was the last line I was trying to think of!" Looking solemnly at the two friends, he added, "This line completes a great poem dedicated to the moon. Shall I recite it for you?"

"No!" Ma Joong said, horrified.

"Shall I sing it then?" Po Kai asked hopefully. "I have a rather good voice, you know, and the other guests here would greatly appreciate it."

"No!" Ma Joong and Chiao Tai answered at the same time. Seeing the other's hurt look, Chiao Tai added, "We just don't like poetry, in any shape or form."

"That's a pity!" Po Kai remarked. "Are you two perhaps students of Buddhism?"

"Is the fellow trying to pick a quarrel?" Ma Joong asked Chiao Tai suspiciously.

"He is drunk," Chiao Tai answered indifferently. And to Po Kai, "Don't tell me that you are a Buddhist!"

"A devout devotee," Po Kai replied primly. "I regularly visit the White Cloud Temple. The abbot is a holy man, and the Prior Hui-pen delivers the most beautiful sermons. The other day-"

"Listen," Chiao Tai interrupted, "shall we have another drink?" Po Kai gave him a reproachful look. He rose with a deep sigh and said resignedly, "Let's have it with the wenches."

"Now you are talking!" Ma Joong said with enthusiasm. "Do you know a good place?"

"Does the horse know its stable?" Po Kai asked with a sniff. He paid the bill and they left.

A heavy fog still hung in the street. Po Kai took them to the waterside at the back of the restaurant, and whistled on his fingers. The bow lantern of a small barge emerged from the mist.

Po Kai stepped inside and said to the rower, "To the boat." "Hey!" Ma Joong shouted. "Didn't I hear you speak about the wenches?"

"Same thing, same thing!" Po Kai replied airily. "Step inside." To the boatman he added, "Take the short cut, the gentlemen are in a great hurry."

He crawled under the low roofmat, and Ma Joong and Chiao Tai squatted down by his side. They glided along through the mist; the splashing of the oar was the only sound they heard. After a time the sound ceased; the boat went on silently. The boatman extinguished the lantern. The boat lay still.

Ma Joong laid his heavy hand on Po Kai's shoulder.

"If this is a trap," he said casually, "I'll break your neck." "Don't talk nonsense!" Po Kai exclaimed testily.

There was the clanking of iron, then the boat moved on again, "We passed under the east watergate," Po Kai explained. "Part of the trellis is loose. But don't tell that to your boss!"

Soon the black hulls of a row of large barges rose up in front of them.

"The second, as usual," Po Kai ordered the boatman.

When their boat was alongside the gangway, Po Kai gave the man a few coppers and climbed on board, followed by Ma Joong and Chiao Tai. He picked his way through a number of small tables and footstools that were standing about in confusion on the deck, and knocked on the door of the cabin. A fat woman dressed in a soiled black silk gown opened. She grinned, showing a row of black teeth.

"Welcome back, Mr. Po Kai!" she said. "Please come downstairs."

They descended a steep wooden ladder, and found themselves in a large cabin, dimly lighted by two colored lampions hanging from the roof beam. The three men sat down at the large table that took up most of the room space. The fat woman clapped her hands. A squat man with a coarse face came in, carrying a tray with wine jugs.

As he poured out the drinks Po Kai asked the woman, "W'here is my good friend and colleague Kim Sang?"

"He hasn't come yet," she replied. "But I'll see to it that you won't get bored!"

She gave a sign to the waiter. He opened the door in the back, and four girls came in, dressed only in thin summer robes. Po Kai greeted them boisterously. Dragging down one girl on either side of him, he said, "I'll take these two! Not for what you think," he added quickly to Ma Joong and Chïao Tai, "but only to make absolutely sure that my cup is never empty."

Ma Joong motioned a plump girl with a pleasant round face to his side, and Chiao Tai started a conversation with the fourth. He thought she was very good-looking but she seemed in a morose mood and answered only when spoken to. Her name was Yü-soo; she was a Korean, but spoke very good Chinese.

"Yours is a beautiful country," Chiao Tai remarked as he put his arm round her waist. "I was there during the war."

The girl pushed him away and gave him a contemptuous look. He realized that he had made a bad mistake and said hurriedly, "Your people are excellent fighters, they did what they could, but they were outnumbered by our troops."

The girl ignored him.

"Can't you smile and talk, wench?" the fat woman snapped at her.

"Leave me alone, will you?" the girl said slowly to her. "The customer doesn't complain, does he?"

The woman got up. Raising her hand to slap Yü-soo, she hissed, "I'll teach you manners, you slut!"

Chiao Tai pushed her back roughly. He growled, "Keep your hands off the girl."

"Let's go up on deck!" Po Kai shouted. "I feel in my liver that the moon is out! Kim Sang will be here soon."

"I'll stay here," the Korean girl told Chiao Tai.

"As you like," he said, and followed the others up on deck.

A bleak moon shone on the row of barges moored along the city wall. Over the dark water of the creek they vaguely saw the opposite bank.

Ma Joong sat down on a low stool and took the plump girl on his lap. Po Kai pushed his two friends over to Chiao Tai.

"Keep them happy," he said. "My mind is now on higher things."

He remained standing, his hands on his back, looking up ecstatically at the moon. Suddenly he said, "Since all of you keep insisting, I shall now sing for you my new poem."

Stretching out his scraggy neck, he burst out in a piercing falsetto voice.

Peerless companion of song and dance,

Friend of the gay, comforter of the sad,

Oh moon, oh silvery moon

He paused for breath, then suddenly lowered his head, listening. Giving the others a quick look, he said peevishly, "I hear an unpleasant noise!"

"So do I!" Ma Joong remarked. "Holy heaven, don't make those awful sounds. Can't you see I am talking seriously with this wench?"

"I was referring to the sounds from below," Po Kai replied stiffly. "I presume that your friend's friend is receiving a gentle correction."

As he fell silent they heard from below the sound of blows and muffled groans. Chiao Tai jumped up and rushed down, with Ma Joong on his heels.

The Korean girl had been stripped naked and laid across the table. The waiter was holding her hands, another man her legs. The fat woman was beating her across her hips with a rattan stick.

Chiao Tai knocked the waiter down with a hard blow on his jaw. The other man let go of the girl's legs and drew a knife from his girdle. Chiao Tai vaulted over the table, threw the woman with her back against the wall, caught the knife-wielder's wrist and gave it a quick twist. The man fell back with a yell of pain; the knife clattered to the floor. The girl let herself roll from the table, tearing frantically at the dirty rag with which she had been gagged. Chiao Tai helped her up and freed her of the gag. The other man stooped to pick up the knife with his left hand, but Ma Joong gave him a kick in his ribs that sent him doubled up into a corner. The girl was retching violently; suddenly she started to vomit.

"One happy little family!" Po Kai remarked from the stairs. "Call the men from the next boat!" the fat woman panted at the waiter, who was scrambling up."

"Call all the bastards together!" Ma Joong shouted with enthusiasm. He broke a leg from his chair to be used as a club. "Slowly, auntie, slowly!" Po Kai called out. "Better be careful. These two men are officers of the tribunal."

The woman grew pale. She quickly motioned the waiter to come back. Falling on her knees before Chiao, she whined, "Please, sir, I only wanted to teach her how to behave to you!"

"I told you to keep your dirty hands off her!" Chiao Tai snapped. He gave the girl his neckcloth to clean her face. She rose and stood there trembling.

"Go and comfort her a bit, brother," Ma Joong counseled. "I'll put that fellow with the knife on his feet again."

Yü-soo took up her robe and went to the door in the back. Chiao Tai followed her into a narrow corridor. The girl opened one of the doors that lined it and motioned Chiao Tai to go inside. Then she went on.

Chiao Tai saw that the cabin was very small. A bed stood under the porthole, the only other furniture was a small dressing table with a rickety bamboo taboret in front of it, and a large red leather clothes box against the wall opposite. Chiao Tai sat down on the clothes box and waited till Yü-soo came in.

As she silently threw her robe on the bed Chiao Tai said awkwardly, "I am sorry, it was all my fault."

"It doesn't matter," the girl said indifferently. She bent over the bed and took a small round box from the windowsill. Chiao Tai could not take his eyes off her shapely figure.

"Better get dressed," he said gruffly.

"It's too hot in here," Yü-soo said in a sullen voice. She had opened the box and was rubbing ointment on the welts across her hips.

"Look," she said suddenly, "you were just in time! The skin is not yet broken."

"Won't you please put that dress on?" Chiao Tai said hoarsely.

"I thought you'd be interested to know," the girl said placidly. "You said yourself it was your fault, didn't you?" She folded her robe up, placed it on the taboret. She sat down carefully and started to do up her hair.

Chiao Tai looked at her well-formed back. He told himself angrily that it would be mean to bother her now. Then he saw her firm round breasts reflected in the mirror. He swallowed and said desperately, "Don't do that! Two of you is just too much for any man.

Yü-soo looked round at him, astonished. Then she shrugged her shapely shoulders, rose and sat down on the bed opposite Chiao Tai.

"Are you really from the tribunal?" she asked casually. "People here often tell lies, you know."

Grateful for the diversion Chiao Tai pulled a folded document from his 'boot. The girl wiped her hands off on her hair, then took it.

"I can't read," she remarked, "but I have good eyes!"

Turning over on her belly, she reached down behind the bed and brought out a flat, square package, tightly wrapped in gray paper. Sitting up again, she compared the seal on Chiao Tai's pass with that impressed over the folds of the wrapper. Handing the pass back to him, she said, "You are right. It's the same seal."

She looked pensively at Chiao Tai, slowly scratching her thigh. "How did you get that package with the seal of the tribunal?" Chiao Tai asked curiously.

"Look, he has come to life," the girl said, pouting. "You are a real thief catcher, aren't you?"

Chiao Tai clenched his fists.

A MEETING IN A FLOWER BOAT

"Look here, woman!" he blurted out. "You just got hurt, didn't you? You don't think that I would be so mean as to want to sleep with you now, do you?"

The girl gave him a sidelong glance. She yawned, then said slowly, "I am not so sure I'd think that mean of you."

Chiao Tai quickly got up.

When he came back in the main cabin he found Po Kai sitting at the table, his head cradled in his arms. He was snoring loudly. The fat woman sat opposite him, looking morosely at a cup of wine. Chiao Tai settled the bill with her, and warned her that she would get into serious trouble with him if she maltreated the Korean girl again.

"She's only a Korean war slave, sir, and I bought her from the government in the regular way," she said sharply. Then she added ingratiatingly, "But your word is of course law to me, sir.

Ma Joong came in, looking very pleased.

"After all, this is rather a cosy place," he remarked. "And that plump girl is first class!"

"I hope soon to have something better for you, sir!" the woman said eagerly. "There's a brand-new one on the fifth boat, a real beauty and well educated too. Just now she is being kept reserved for a certain gentleman but, well, those things don't last forever, as you know! Maybe in a week or two="

"Splendid!" exclaimed Ma Joong. "We'll be back. But tell those men of yours not to wave knives at us. That upsets us, and when we are upset we are liable to become a bit rough." Shaking Po Kai's shoulder he shouted in his ear, "Wake up, gay songster! It's nearly midnight, time to go home!"

Po Kai raised his head. lie gave the two men a jaundiced look. "You two are utterly vulgar," he remarked haughtily. "You'll never understand my lofty spirit. I prefer to wait here for my good friend Kim Sang. Your company is distasteful to me, you think only of drinking and fornication. Go away; I despise you!"

Ma Joong roared with laughter. He pushed Po Kai's cap down over his eyes, then he went up with Chiao Tai and whistled for a boat.