The Haunted Monastery

XVIII

Outside, the judge said sourly to Tao Gan: "I'd better resign as magistrate and set up business as a professional matchmaker. I have brought together two young couples, but I can't find a dangerous maniac! Let's go to your room. We must devise a plan, and quick!"

While they were walking down the corridor, Tao Gan said sadly: "I am awfully sorry, sir, that when passing through the gallery to fetch the painting from the temple, I didn't pause to have a second look at that poor naked woman. Then I would have noticed the blood and…"

"You needn't be sorry," the judge remarked dryly. "It does you credit. Leave it to your colleague Ma Joong to gape at unclothed women!"

Seated in Tao Gan's small room, Judge Dee silently drank the tea his lieutenant made for him. Then he sighed and said: "Well, I know now that it was the armless wooden statue from the Gallery of Horrors that I saw Mo move about in that secret hide-out of his. So we have found the one-armed woman, but I still can't understand how I could have seen the original wooden statue through a window that isn't there! However, let's leave that problem for the time being, and concentrate on the new, concrete facts we learned. Mo must have used Mrs. Pao as a procuress, and the dead abbot must have connived at their sordid affairs. Mo must have planned to place Miss Kang in the Gallery of Horrors for some time. He had removed the wooden statue before we arrived here, and probably also prepared the clamps in the wall. The cheek of that villain to go on with his infernal scheme, right under my nose!" The judge tugged angrily at his beard. "When Mrs. Pao had informed Mo and the abbot that White Rose was thinking of giving up her plan of becoming a nun, and wanted to establish contact with Miss Ou-yang, they decided to act quickly. They knew I was scheduled to leave the monastery this morning, and if I should inquire after her, they could easily explain the girl's absence by saying that she had gone into retreat for a few days in the forbidden part of the monastery. Thereafter they would have cowed the poor girl so thoroughly by their infernal tortures that she wouldn't have dared to denounce them, and they would doubtless have found some way to explain things to Miss Ou-yang, or Kang I-te rather, and to Tsung Lee. By then she would have been raped, and she herself wouldn't have liked to see her brother or the poet again. Those unspeakable fiends!"

He knitted his thick eyebrows. Tao Gan quietly pulled at the three long hairs on his cheek. No human depravity could ever astonish him. The judge resumed: "The abbot escaped earthly justice, but we'll get Mo Mo-te, and he is the main criminal. I don't think the abbot had the pluck; he was a coward at heart. But Mo is a completely ruthless, perverted maniac. There's no time for half-measures now, Tao Gan! I'll go and rouse Master Sun. We'll have all the inmates assembled in the large hall and we'll let Kuan Lai and Kang I-te look them over. If Mo isn't found among them, we'll search the entire accursed place, as I had already planned." Tao Gan looked doubtful.

"I am afraid, sir, that we can't have the whole monastery roused without Mo suspecting that the commotion has something to do with him. He will have fled before the check began. The storm is over, and Heaven knows how many exits this place has. Once he is in the mountains, it'll prove very difficult to catch him. It would be quite different, of course, if we had Ma Joong, Chiao Tai, and the rest of the staff here, with twenty constables or so. But with only the two of us…" He didn't complete the sentence.

Judge Dee nodded unhappily. He had to agree that his lieutenant was right. But what to do then? Absent-mindedly he took up a chopstick, and tried to balance the saucer of his teacup on its tip.

"It's a great pity that we haven't a plan of this monastery," Tao Gan resumed. "If we had one, we could probably make a good guess where that bedroom is to which Mrs. Pao took White Rose. It can't be far from the store-room where Your Honour saw Mo putting away the wooden statue of the naked woman from the gallery. And then we could also verify the thickness of the walls there."

"Master Sun showed me a diagram," Judge Dee said. "A kind of outline of the plan the monastery is built on." He kept his eyes on the saucer; he thought he had got it nearly balanced. "That was a great help for my general orientation. But of course it didn't give any details."

He let the saucer go and lifted the chopstick at the same time. The saucer fell and broke into pieces on the stone floor.

Tao Gan stooped and picked the broken pieces up. Trying to fit them together on the table he asked curiously: "What were you trying to do, sir?"

"Oh," the judge replied a little self-consciously, "it's a trick Miss Ting did. You make the saucer whirl round on top of the chopstick, you see. It can't fly away because of the rim round the bottom. It's quite a neat trick. That whirling saucer reminded me of the round Taoist symbol Master Sun drew at the top of his diagram, the two primordial forces turning round and round in eternal interaction. Funny I let it drop. When I saw Miss Ting doing it, it looked very easy!"

"Most tricks look easy when they are done well!" Tao Gan remarked with his thin smile. "But as a matter of fact they call for very long practice! Good, there's no piece missing. Tomorrow I'll mend this saucer, then it can still be used for many more years!"

"What makes you so parsimonious, Tao Gan?" Judge Dee asked curiously. "I know that you have ample private means, and no family obligations. You needn't become a wastrel, even if you don't grudge every single copper!"

His thin lieutenant gave him a shy look. He said, rather diffidently: "Heaven has presented us with so many good things, sir, and gratis too! A roof to shelter us, food for our stomach, clothes for our body. I am always afraid that some day Heaven'll become angry, seeing that we take all those good things for granted, even spend them recklessly. Therefore I can't bear to throw away anything that can still be used in some way or another. Look, sir, there'll only remain that one bad crack, the one that cuts horizontally through the flower design. But that can't be helped!"

Judge Dee sat up in his chair. He stared fixedly at the re-assembled saucer that Tao Gan held together in his cupped hands.

Suddenly he jumped up and started to walk back and forth in the small room, muttering to himself. Tao Gan looked up, then stared again at the broken saucer in his hands. He wondered what the judge had seen there.

Judge Dee halted in front of Tao Gan. He exclaimed excitedly: "I am a fool, Tao Gan! I have let myself be led around by my nose, that's what I've done! There's no need to assemble all the inmates, I know now where to find our man! Come along. I'll go to Master Sun's library. You'll wait for me on the landing over the temple!" He took the lantern and ran out, followed by Tao Gan.

The two men went down. They parted in the empty courtyard. Judge Dee crossed over to the west wing, passed through the portal of the refectory, and ascended the stairs to Sun's quarters. He knocked several times on the carved door, but there was no answer. He pushed, and found that the door wasn't locked. He went inside.

The library was in semi-darkness, the candles burning low. The judge went over to the narrow door behind the desk, which presumably led to Sun's bedroom. He knocked again. He pressed his ear against the door, but heard nothing. He tried to open it, but it was securely locked.

He turned round and pensively surveyed the room. Then he stepped up to the scroll with the diagram, and looked for a while intently at the round symbol of the two forces depicted at the top. He turned to the door and left. Giving the broken balustrade a brief look, he entered the passage leading east to the square landing over the temple hall.

The judge vaguely heard the murmur of prayers coming up from the temple-nave below. Tao Gan was nowhere to be seen. He shrugged his shoulders and took the corridor leading to the store-room. Its door was standing ajar.

He went inside and lifted his lantern high. The room was exactly as he had seen it the last time he was there looking for Mo Mo-te. But the double door of the antique cupboard in the farthest corner was standing open. He ran up to it, stepped inside and held his lantern close to the picture of the two dragons on the back wall. The round circle in between them was indeed the Taoist symbol of the two forces, but the dividing line was horizontal. When he had asked Sun about it, he had forgotten that it had been here that he had seen the circle thus divided. Tao Gan's remarks and the broken saucer had made him see the connection.

He now also saw what he hadn't noticed before, namely that there was a small dot in each half of the circle, the germ mentioned by Sun when he had explained the meaning of the symbol to him. Looking closer, the dots turned out to be in fact small holes, bored deeply into the wood. He tapped the circle with his knuckle. No, it wasn't wood, it was an iron disk. And a narrow groove separated it from the lacquered surface surrounding it.

He thought he knew what those two holes in a round metal disk meant. He lifted his cap and pulled the hairpin from his top-knot. Inserting its point into one of the holes, he tried to make the disk turn to the left. It didn't budge. Then he tried the opposite direction, holding the hairpin with two hands. Now the disk turned around. He could make it turn easily five times, then it seemed to get stuck. With some difficulty he succeeded in making it turn around four more times. The right half of the back wall of the cupboard started to move a little, like a door about to swing open. He heard vague sounds on the other side. He softly pushed the door shut again.

He stepped back into the room, ran out into the corridor and looked around on the landing. Tao Gan hadn't come yet. Well, he would have to do without a witness. He went back to the store-room, entered the cupboard, and pulled the door open.

He saw a narrow passage only three feet wide, running five feet or so to the right, parallel with the wall. With two quick strides he turned the corner. He looked into a small room, dimly lit by only one dust-covered oil lamp hanging from the low ceiling. A tall, broad-backed man stood bent over the bamboo couch that took up the back wall, rubbing it with a piece of cloth. On the floor the judge saw a kitchen chopper lying in a pool of blood.